at any rate

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English[edit]

Prepositional phrase[edit]

at any rate

  1. (conjunctive) In any case, anyway, anyhow, regardless; used to discard or qualify a previous thought.
    Jim broke the window — or maybe it was John? At any rate, the window’s broken now.
    He's stinking rich — or, at any rate, pretty well off.
    • 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01:
      The Bat—they called him the Bat. []. He [] played a lone hand, []. Most lone wolves had a moll at any rate—women were their ruin—but if the Bat had a moll, not even the grapevine telegraph could locate her.
    • 1947 July and August, “Notes and News: Caledonian Reminiscences”, in Railway Magazine, page 256:
      At any rate, in my experience, they could run like the wind, but longer and heavier trains slowly but surely became too much for them.
    • 1978, Daniel C. Dennett, “Where Am I?”, in Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, Bradford Books:
      What moved from A to B at such speed was surely myself, or at any rate my soul or mind — the massless center of my being and home of my consciousness.
    • 2008, Graham Oppy, David Dowe, “The Turing Test”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
      Why couldn't it be the case that there are intelligent things that are unable to carry on a conversation, or, at any rate, unable to carry on a conversation with creatures like us?

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