# suffice it to say



## m. des enquêtes

i haven't seen this expression in French but boy I'd sure like to use it.  Suffice it to say, it'd be really cool.  heh


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## charlie warlie

in english its usually "suffice to say", no?


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## Alcon Gui

Est-ce l'équivalent de 

"Il suffit de dire.."
"Il sufit de le dire"

Je ne sais pas ????

Est-ce la question?


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## edwingill

qu'il suffise de dire


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## geve

Hello m. des enquêtes, et bienvenue sur ce forum,

If I understand the expression right, this "suffice" part is more rethorical than anything, it doesn't add much to the sentence meaning except adding some emphasis?

Then maybe something along these lines:
_Je peux vous assurer que... _
_Autant dire que..._
_Une chose est sûre, c'est que..._
?

And I'd be interested to have confirmation whether it's "suffice it to say" or "suffice to say" (or if this is a AE/BE difference maybe)


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## NYCPrincesse

I'm fairly certain that in American English we say "Suffice *it* to say."  But I have never seen the term written, only spoken...


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## polaire

charlie warlie said:
			
		

> in english its usually "suffice to say", no?


Well, I've always heard it only as the original poster put it.  E.g., "Suffice it to say."


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## edwingill

my concise OED puts *it* in brackets suffice (it) to say. so both versions might be correct


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## french4beth

I have heard both with 'it' and without - here's a link: http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19970714


> The *it* in *suffice it to say* is an *impersonal* or *indefinite* pronoun, one that functions as a grammatical placeholder without supplying much real meaning.


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## polaire

I don't doubt that an alternative exists if it's in the OED.  Personally, I would use:  "Suffice it to say," especially in a formal context.


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## mapping

OK OK there's two ways of saying it, with or without the it.
Now what about a possible translation in French ?
I'd like to know what it means !

Is it something like _C'est vrai que, _ou_ En fait,?_
The kind of thing you can start a sentence with but it doesn't add anything or change the meaning of the sentence, like some people say _basically _all the time ?


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## Jean-Michel Carrère

je me contenterai de dire que ...


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## KittyCatty

Hi, I've never heard of "Suffice it to say". Is it exclusively AE?


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## geve

Thank you for clarifying the "it or not it" issue!

I support Jean-Michel's suggestion _"Je me contenterai de dire..."_  
Maybe you could also change the sentence order and conclude with _"c'est tout ce que j'ai à dire/ce qu'il y a à dire"._..?


			
				KittyCatty said:
			
		

> Hi, I've never heard of "Suffice it to say". Is it exclusively AE?


Interesting question! Now that I think about it, I think I've read it mostly from AE speakers on this forum...


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## polaire

mapping said:
			
		

> OK OK there's two ways of saying it, with or without the it.
> Now what about a possible translation in French ?
> I'd like to know what it means !
> 
> Is it something like _C'est vrai que, _ou_ En fait,?_
> * The kind of thing you can start a sentence with but it doesn't add anything or change the meaning of the sentence, like some people say basically all the time ?*


Sort of, but with a bit more substance.  Literally:  "It should be necessary only to say [the following]."  

An alternative is:  "Needless to say."  "Suffice it to say" is more formal. Depending on the person and the tone it can sound informative and serious or prissy and stuffy.


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## englishman

KittyCatty said:
			
		

> Hi, I've never heard of "Suffice it to say". Is it exclusively AE?


No, it's perfectly good BE. I would never say "suffice to say". There's also a third variant:

"May it suffice to say"


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## Gil

Example:
Suffice it to say that I had completed that job by Christmas.
J'avais terminé ce boulot pour Noêl, pas besoin d'en dire plus.


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## KittyCatty

englishman said:
			
		

> No, it's perfectly good BE. I would never say "suffice to say". There's also a third variant:
> 
> "May it suffice to say"


 
Thanks! Guess I'm just an ignorant adolescent after all


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## carolineR

Cela va sans dire ... : cela vous irait-il, comme traduction ?


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## KittyCatty

That goes without saying! 
Alas, it's true


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## Gil

carolineR said:
			
		

> Cela va sans dire ... : cela vous irait-il, comme traduction ?


AMA, non.  Suffice it to say =>  On le dit en anglais
                Cela va sans dire =>  On ne le dit pas en français.


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## LMorland

carolineR said:


> Cela va sans dire ... : cela vous irait-il, comme traduction ?


Dear Caroline,

No, in my experience suffice it to say does not mean cela va sans dire.  It goes without saying, in English, is used to introduce a clause that the speaker wants to utter, but is afraid that others might think is obvious: "It goes without saying that over the past decade the overall business environment has undergone dramatic changes. "

_Suffice it to say _more often refers to the speaker's point of view:  "*Suffice it to say* that if Dead Again is not a great film, it's certainly one wildly entertaining ride."  It's a kind of summing up of the speaker's previously expressed opinions, and often a signal that the speaker is coming to the end of his or her discourse on the particular topic.

[Both these quotations were drawn from a random Google search.]

Let me know whether this explanation helps!


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## Honfleur

The following is probably a roundabout way of expressing the compact English expression. 
Je m'en tiendrais a dire que...
I  like Gil's straightforward approach, though: "Pas besoin d'en dire plus"


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## carolineR

LMorland said:


> _Suffice it to say _more often refers to the speaker's point of view:  "*Suffice it to say *that if _Dead Again _is not a great film, it's certainly one wildly entertaining ride."  It's a kind of summing up of the speaker's previously expressed opinions, and often a signal that the speaker is coming to the end of his or her discourse on the particular topic.


yes, very much, thank's  it is indeed something like "... et n'en disons pas plus", then


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## tilt

A late contribution...

I received few days ago a mail ending with this sentence: _ Suffice to say we wish you a nicer than nice Christmas and all the best fortune for 2008._

CarolineR suggestion makes plenty of sense in such a context, even if _cela va sans dire_ is usually set at the end of the sentence (doesn't sound that good if followed by _que_). At its beginning, it's more likely to be said _Il va sans dire que..._


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## Cath.S.

_Disons simplement que..._
mais pas dans l'exemple de Tilt où le scripteur voulait manifestement dire _bien entendu_ ou _cela va sans dire._


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## LMorland

tilt said:


> I received few days ago a mail ending with this sentence: _ Suffice to say we wish you a nicer than nice Christmas and all the best fortune for 2008._


Hi, tilt --

This _'Christmas courriel' _you received, was it written by a speaker of BE?  Because it seems to me that the variant "suffice to say" is BE, as I've never heard it, and the Americans on this thread seem to share my opinion. 

It's possible that the expression has kind of "lost its oomph" (the precise term of art escapes me at the moment) in British English, and that the distinction I so carefully elaborated back in March (see my post #22) no longer holds in the Mother Country.  

In your example there, it's _pure filler,_ and to judge by the quality of the rest of the sentence, the writer is not a self-assured one.  (But one full of nice sentiments!  I certainly don't want to cast aspersions on your Christmas letter!)  

Still, your description of the location of this sentence shows that it does adhere to my "rule" that _"It's a kind of summing up of the speaker's previously expressed opinions, and* often a signal that the speaker is coming to the end of his or her discourse *on the particular topic."_

At any rate, thanks for reviving the thread, tilt. Now that I've been on the Forum a year, I can experience the shock of seeing a post of mine that I didn't recall having written!


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## Tresley

When I see *'il suffit de rappeler' *or* 'il suffit de dire' *or* 'il suffit de constater' *in French documents, I usually translate this as *'suffice to say'*.

It's usually at the beginning of a French sentence too.

I don't translate it as 'suffice it to say' as that sounds very weird'. Who is this 'it' that says things???  Very strange indeed!


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## LMorland

Tresley said:


> I don't translate it as 'suffice it to say' as that sounds very weird'. Who is this 'it' that says things???  Very strange indeed!


You don't know this "it", Tresley, because apparently it left Yorkshire for the New World on the same boat as my ancestors did!  "It" likes it over here, and _we_ find that phrase _very strange _without "it"! 

LMorland aka Laura Morland = Laura of the Moors

[On a more sober note, I would guess that the original phrase was "It suffices to say" as in "It is important to note", and then the "suffice" and the "it" reversed order at some point. But I don't have my unabridged OED to hand; maybe you do?]


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## tilt

LMorland said:


> Hi, tilt --
> 
> This _'Christmas courriel' _you received, was it written by a speaker of BE?  Because it seems to me that the variant "suffice to say" is BE, as I've never heard it, and the Americans on this thread seem to share my opinion.


This sentence ends a mail from w.a.s.t.e., Radiohead's commercial site. So I guess we can say this is BE, yes.


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## MrMoto

polaire said:


> Sort of, but with a bit more substance.  Literally:  "It should be necessary only to say [the following]."
> 
> An alternative is:  "Needless to say."  "Suffice it to say" is more formal. Depending on the person and the tone it can sound informative and serious or prissy and stuffy.




I don't think that "suffice it to say" and "needless to say" are equivalent.

"Suffice it to say" introduces some kind of summarizing statement, one that contains all the sufficient information.

"Needless to say" introduces an obvious or pointless sentence, because ... well, it didn't need to be said.


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## Calga

The expression suggests that one is witholding something for reasons of discretion *or *brevity.


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## jusap

I like both "cela va sans dire" and "je me contenterai de dire" sugested above. As a casual alternative I would suggest "en tout cas" which serves a similar "filler", emphatic purpose even without translating the literal meaning. I would like to point out, however, that I would not use "suffice it to say" in formal or academic writing, whereas the French translations lend themselves well to almost any context.


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## lakiwiette

KittyCatty said:


> Hi, I've never heard of "Suffice it to say". Is it exclusively AE?


 

I hear it every now and then in NZ English, although usually in a more conversational register.


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## WordRef1

Could it work for some cases to say, " Sans dire de plus, "?


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## Traveller5

englishman said:


> No, it's perfectly good BE. I would never say "suffice to say". There's also a third variant:
> 
> "May it suffice to say"



This might be an English (read: England) thing, because this would sound a bit strange in NA English (written or oral).


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## Berkeleygirl

So far no one has defined "suffice it to say," an expression employed loosely and incorrectly. It actually has a specific usage: to indicate that one is summarizing, to save time or to spare the reader/listener (indiscreet) details. For example: suffice it to say that he wasn't the one for me. It's not the same as "it goes without saying," or "needless to say" (synonyms meaning clearly, obviously). But because it is dated and used vaguely, I personally would not use it in a formal context unless I was certain it was my only choice.


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## Traveller5

Berkeleygirl said:


> So far no one has defined "suffice it to say," an expression employed loosely and incorrectly. It actually has a specific usage: to indicate that one is summarizing, to save time or to spare the reader/listener (indiscreet) details. For example: suffice it to say that he wasn't the one for me. It's not the same as "it goes without saying," or "needless to say" (synonyms meaning clearly, obviously). But because it is dated and used vaguely, I personally would not use it in a formal context unless I was certain it was my only choice.



I think this is quite formal expression in any case - which is to say that youths certainly wouldn't use it and probably mostly adults from a particular cultural milieu (generally speaking). 

That being said, I think it's quite acceptable to use "suffice it to say" in a written context: it simply depends on the style of the text in which you intend to write it.

In a Canadian supreme court case (Egan v. Canada), for instance, a supreme court judge uses "suffice it to say". But in that text, he's also writing in the first-person.


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## papamac

I don't think this really is the same as "cela va sans dire".

"Suffice it to say" is used when you have discussed something, perhaps rambling a bit, and then you want to express some sort of conclusion or final word on the issue.  For example, "John never cleans up after himself. He has a bad temper. I'm really getting sick of him. Suffice it to say, he has a lot of room for improvement."  It is a bit ironic, because you say your final point is all you needed to say, after you have already been saying much more.  It essentially means "in summary".

"Needless to say" or "It goes without saying" would not work quite the same way.  It essentially means "of course" or "obviously".

I think 'en tout cas' would be a better French translation, or perhaps 'Alors, disons que...'.


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## Maîtreaupôle

Forgive me. I can't help myself. I'm returning to the "suffice to say" or "suffice it to say" conundrum. While "suffice it to say" is the modern and corrupted expression one hears and writes (not "suffice it..."), I believe it comes from a Elizabethan or other early English expression "sufficeth to say".


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## carolineR

En tout cas...
dans tous les cas...
en un mot...
Bref...


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## In Absentia

Maîtreaupôle said:


> Forgive me. I can't help myself. I'm returning to the "suffice to say" or "suffice it to say" conundrum. While "suffice it to say" is the modern and corrupted expression one hears and writes (not "suffice it..."), I believe it comes from a Elizabethan or other early English expression "sufficeth to say".



I think you have that the wrong way round:



> The [OED] quotes the poet John Dryden as writing “It suffices to  say” in 1692,  but the later examples, from the 18th and 19th  centuries, are in the subjunctive mood: “suffice it to say.”



From this off-site link, which may interest some people.


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## Maîtreaupôle

In Absentia,

Hmmm... Looks like I was having a bad day. So much for my relying on a failing memory.


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