Citations:would


 * 1) Would – Used to indicate a wish or desire:
 * 2) * 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Book of Revelation, 3:15
 * I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
 * 1) * 1623, William Shakespeare in Timon of Athens
 * Would thou were clean enough to spit on
 * 1) * 1660, Friday 15 January 1663/64. The Diary of Samuel Pepys
 * I would to God my wife had told him that she was (with child).
 * 1) (Might wish; often used in the sense of “if only”)
 * 2) *1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 3
 * 3) **ch. II, Gospel of Mammonism
 * Consider, for example, that great Hat seven-feet high, which now perambulates London Streets; which my Friend Sauerteig regarded justly as one of our English notabilities; “the topmost point as yet,” said he, “would it were your culminating and returning point, to which English Puffery has been observed to reach!”
 * 1) **ch. VII, Over-Production
 * To the idler, again, never so gracefully going idle, coming forward with never so many parchments, you will not hasten out; you will sit still, and be disinclined to rise. You will say to him: “Not welcome, O complex Anomaly; would thou hadst staid out of doors: for who of mortals knows what to do with thee? […] ”
 * 1) (call to a deity or other higher power, followed by to)
 * 2) *1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present
 * Would to Heaven, for the sake of Conservatism itself, the noble alone were left, and the ignoble, by some kind severe hand, were ruthlessly lopped away ; book 1, ch. 2, "The Sphinx"
 * Would to Heaven that we had a sieve; that we could so much as fancy any kind of sieve, wind-fanners, or ne-plus-ultra of machinery, devisable by man, that would do it! ; book 1, ch. 5, "Aristocracy of Talent"
 * 1) *1861, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Early Italian Poets, Albertuccio della Viola, Canzone. Of his Lady dancing.
 * Oh! would to God that I had never seen
 * Her face, nor had beheld her dancing so!