SO TO SPEAK

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does so to speak mean? 

• SO TO SPEAK (adverb)
  The adverb SO TO SPEAK has 2 senses:

1. as if it were really so

2. in a manner of speaking

  Familiarity information: SO TO SPEAK used as an adverb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SO TO SPEAK (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

As if it were really so

Synonyms:

as it were; so to speak

Context example:

she lives here, as it were

Sense 2

Meaning:

In a manner of speaking

Synonyms:

as we say; so to speak

Context example:

the feeling is, as we say, quite dead

 Context examples 

With the Sun so far away, January is your personal low point, your winter, so to speak.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Meanwhile Clerval occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral relations of things.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

The coracle, left to herself, turning from side to side, threaded, so to speak, her way through these lower parts and avoided the steep slopes and higher, toppling summits of the wave.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

So to speak, there was in these respects a curious inattention in my mind.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"The data suggest that something is not right, so to speak, inside Mimas," said Radwan Tajeddine, a Cassini research associate at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and lead author on the paper.

(Saturn Moon May Hide a 'Fossil' Core or an Ocean, NASA)

Why, I may say, nothing of it, except, ah, according to your own reasoning, there is nothing to prevent your getting out, hitting the frost, so to speak, for a matter of ten miles.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Without saying any more he took his seat, and the Professor began to resume his statement:—We must trace each of these boxes; and when we are ready, we must either capture or kill this monster in his lair; or we must, so to speak, sterilise the earth, so that no more he can seek safety in it.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

They are “eclipsed out,” so to speak, when they announce they are leaving for a new job or moving far away for any number of reasons.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

I don't so much mind the fust—the 'ittin' with a pole afore I chucks in their dinner; but I waits till they've 'ad their sherry and kawffee, so to speak, afore I tries on with the ear-scratchin'.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I had thought it to be the blind man's trumpet, so to speak, summoning his crew to the assault, but I now found that it was a signal from the hillside towards the hamlet, and from its effect upon the buccaneers, a signal to warn them of approaching danger.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)