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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

at any rate en · ADP

Pronunciation

  • (Southern-England) audio

Meanings

  1. (conjunctive) In any case: anyway, anyhow, regardless; used to discard a previous thought or discount its importance.
    • 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.
    • 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. 1947 July and August, “Notes and News: Caledonian Reminiscences”, in Railway Magazine, page 256:
    • 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. 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:
  2. In any case: by any measure, any way one slices it; used to emphasize that a point matters no matter which instance is operative or how one looks at the situation.
    • 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? 2008, Graham Oppy, David Dowe, “The Turing Test”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
    • At any rate, no aircraft can leave this hangar until no fewer than three inspectors have signed off on it.
    • 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. 1978, Daniel C. Dennett, “Where Am I?”, in Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, Bradford Books:
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see at, any, rate.
    • Mr Chairman, I'd point out here that taxation without representation is an affront at any rate, low or high, but it is especially galling at the rate that Mr Smith proposes.

Synonyms

at all events · in any event · in any event · at all events