Would have

Question

Can you please explain "would have"?

"Today a member of the clergy might sneer at this custom, expecting that by this time such superstitions would have receded into the past with witches and ghosts."

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

The key word is 'expecting'.

You can say it with 'had receded':

A member of the clergy might expect that such superstitions had receded into the past.

Substituting 'would have receded' makes the expectation more emphatically counterfactual. The clergy member might expect this to have happened, but it didn't happen.

A member of the clergy might expect that such superstitions would have receded into the past.

This turn of phrase (with would have) suggests that a reasonable person will have a reasonable expectation of how events unfold in time, and that such a person is confounded by the fact that events did not proceed according to this reasonable expectation. There is a sense of surprise when 'would have' is used this way.

1. Suppose you set water to boiling on a stove. You return five minutes later, and the water is frozen! You say (to yourself)

I can't imagine what happened! I thought the water would have boiled. I didn't think that the water would have frozen!

2. Suppose a friend of yours was about to apply to Apple for employment. He showed you the resume he was sending in. It was a mess. There was bad grammar, and there were misspellings. It was obvious that he expressed himself very badly in writing. And besides, the whole thing was covered in smudges of ink.

Three weeks later he happily announced that Apple had given him the job. You say (to yourself)

This is amazing. I fully expected that Apple would have rejected his application immediately.

3., 4., 5., ... I leave it to you to invent other scenarios in which 'would have' is used like this.

CJ

Would have

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