Talk:affor

Discussion
Moglex 21:00, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * While b.g.c. lists almost 800 hits, they all seem to be mis-scannings of "afford" or "afford-able", etc., or hits for the acronym AFFOR, or Scottish legal texts. --Connel MacKenzie 18:00, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily Scottish, but very old texts. Is this in the OED? DAVilla 23:10, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Not in OED2+ with that meaning (they have one quote using it in the sense of before: "1399 Rich. Redeless IV. 72 They bente on a bonet, and bare a topte saile Affor the wynde ffresshely, to make a good ffare.") NB: If it were a Scots word, it wouldn't be in the OED. --Eng in ear 20:27, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Wonderful. I saw that quote in another book but couldn't find any source information whatsoever.
 * I've dug up what I could. There should be enough material for a translation of "before" (but which meaning?), and evidence towards the corruption of afford. The definitions that are there now I'm not sure about, but see the reference. Seems to be describing an English word, but is this Latin? DAVilla 19:25, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I assume you know that your 1904 cite is merely a phonetic transcription of a sloppy rendering of the chorus to the 1892 Harry Dacre song Daisy Bell, which from memory goes "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do!/I'm half crazy, all for the love of you./It won't be a stylish marriage: I can't afford a carriage/But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two. Without a fuller context, I can't be sure whether the version you cite represents English usage, or the usage of someone who is attempting to sing (or transcribe) a song in a language they don't understand. --Eng in ear 22:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Wasn't aware of that. Presumably "true" rather than "do" in this version, plus other differences. The author may be documenting the migration of those lyrics to India, and if she were using some sort of phonetic transcription then the quotation should be scrapped. Difficult to tell in a limited book view. DAVilla 21:36, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The only real sense cited is "before". Before is also the only context I know it in. If anyone can provide credible cites for any of the other meanings please put them in. I have ammended it as such and put the disputed meanings on the talk page. Andrew massyn 07:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Disputed meanings.
to affor
 * 1) To address to.
 * 2) To be addressed to.
 * 3) To be decreed by fate.

Disputed use as conjunction
affor I can find no citation for this usage meaning "rather than", or any sign of where this example came from. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 02:39, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Rather than.
 * I would die affor giving up my virtue.
 * Use WT:RFV instead of removing it. — Ungoliant (falai) 00:20, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry - I'm used to Wikipedia and Wikiquote, and assumed the protocol was the same here. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 23:44, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Only for obvious vandalism and nonsense. The community here is very small and people rarely pay attention to individual pages, that’s why we use centralised discussion pages such as WT:RFV, WT:RFD, WT:BP, etc.
 * If you have reason to suspect this sense doesn’t exist, add after the # and start a discussion at WT:RFV. — Ungoliant (falai) 23:50, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

RFV discussion: December 2014–July 2015
affor I can find no citation for this usage as a conjunction meaning "rather than". It's not in the OED, and the example sentence (also unsourced) is perfectly compatible with meaning given in the OED: a variant (Middle English) spelling of "afore" (= before). Gordonofcartoon (talk) 23:50, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Rather than.
 * I would die affor giving up my virtue.


 * Relatedly, some of the quotations for the verb sense of affor look to me like they are actually uses of the preposition meaning "before" (though I don't know enough Middle English to be sure about all of them). If someone familiar with Middle English and Early Modern English could sort those out, that would be wonderful. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 00:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed, and not just some - nearly all of the verb citations match afore (before) rather than "afford". A look at Google Books also finds no hits for "afforring" except an obvious OCR error for "affording"; nor for "afforred" (similar errors for "afforded"); nor for "affors", which appears as various misreadings such as "affors'd" (i.e. "aforesaid"), OCR error for "actors", and similar. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 16:07, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Agreed, there is no such verb. Why has it been sitting there in our entry for seven years?  We need to delete this part of speech, but we can keep the cites as prepositions.  The OED has afore as a conjunction meaning "before", but marks it as "Now archaic and regional".  In my native dialect, "afore" is used to mean rather than where others might use "before" with the same meaning (see our entry: "rather or sooner than") at our entry for before (conjunction).  I've never seen it spelt affor, but the OED has one cite with this spelling (as a conjunction in 1470).    D b f  i  r  s   20:06, 24 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The verb and conjunction fail; I have kept the citations (which all actually used the preposition). - -sche (discuss) 02:57, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Tea Room
See Tea room/2015/July. - -sche (discuss) 18:38, 11 August 2015 (UTC)