# Had you rather...



## majlo

Hi,
It's from the book "Silence of the Lambs".

_You're hopping around the truth. If you're tired, we could talk toward the end of the week. I'm rather bored myself. Or *had you rather talk now*?_

I assume it's another version for "would you rather." Is it literary style? Do you ever hear this version in everyday spoken English?


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## entangledbank

'Had rather' is the difficult-to-explain construction used in everyday 'had better'; other variations include 'had as soon'. It seems rather literary. I wonder if it persists because the usual contraction 'you'd rather/better' is not clear about which auxiliary is used.


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## majlo

I don't think it has anything to do with 'had better.' The meaning is completely different.


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## Thomas Tompion

It sounds just wrong to me.  I'd take it to mean 'would you rather talk now'.


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## Cagey

This construction has been around for a while.  The *OED'*s first citation of this construction with _*rather*_ is:*1478* M. PASTON in _Paston Lett._ (1904) V. 325, I had rather that ye never maryd in yowyr lyffe. ​The *OED* explains it thus, under_* have*_:*22. a.* The past Subjunctive _had_ = would have, is used idiomatically with adjectives (or adverbs) in the comparative, as _better_, _liefer_, _sooner_, _rather_; in the superlative, as _best_, _liefest_; or in the positive with ‘as’, _as good_, _as lief_, _as soon_, _as well_, to express preference or comparative desirability.​


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## majlo

Thank you.
Cagey, do you ever hear that in everyday spoken American English?


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## Thomas Tompion

Cagey said:


> This construction has been around for a while. The *OED'*s first citation of this construction with _*rather*_ is:
> *1478* M. PASTON in _Paston Lett._ (1904) V. 325, I had rather that ye never maryd in yowyr lyffe. ​The *OED* explains it thus, under_* have*_:
> *22. a.* The past Subjunctive _had_ = would have, is used idiomatically with adjectives (or adverbs) in the comparative, as _better_, _liefer_, _sooner_, _rather_; in the superlative, as _best_, _liefest_; or in the positive with ‘as’, _as good_, _as lief_, _as soon_, _as well_, to express preference or comparative desirability.​


I can accept _I had rather that we talked now_, and could easily say it, but I'm still having trouble with _Had you rather talk now?_

I'm also happy with _I'd rather talk now_. I couldn't say _I had rather talk now_ conversely, so _I'd rather talk now_ must be a contraction of_ I would rather talk now_, which sounds fine.


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## majlo

I agree. I wouldn't have trouble with _I'd rather talk now_ either.
However, bearing in mind that it was used in a book, maybe it's just pure literary style? I don't think Thomas Harris meant "Would you rather..." but wrote "Had you rather..." by accident.


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## Thomas Tompion

Could it be an intentional mistake?  Is the person speaking foreign, or trying to appear so?  Some people make mistakes of language in order to disconcert the person they are talking to.  Could that be happening here?


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## majlo

Hmmm, I don't think so. It's Dr Lecter talking to Clarice Starling. I don't have a reason to think he would like to disconcert her in any way. I think Harris simply dug out this expression from OED; or maybe I'm just underestimating him.


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## Cagey

I think it is used colloquially in AmE, though I can't prove it.  I'll have to start keeping track.  It is standard AmE according to the _Columbia Guide to Standard American English_. 

"_I had rather be right than president_" (Henry Clay, 1839) is a well-known quote, and paraphrased from time to time for rhetorical effect. 

As Thomas Thompion points out, to use this in a question may be a different thing.  I am not certain whether we do use it in question form.  

I don't know this book, but the author is American. Isn't the speaker supposed to be rather affected in his speech? 


William Shakespeare:O curse of marriage!

That we can call these delicate creatures ours,

And not their appetites! _I had rather be a toad
_
And live upon the vapour of a dungeon

Than keep a corner in the thing I love

For others' uses.​(Spoken by Othello in the play _Othello)_


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## majlo

Cagey said:


> I don't know this book, but the author is American. Isn't the speaker supposed to be rather affected in his speech?



Well, anyone who's seen the movie The Silence of the Lambs will admit that Dr Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, in the movie) is quite peculiar a guy; and yes, he was especially affected by Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster, in the movie).


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## LV4-26

Although literary sounding,_ I had rather_ is fairly familiar to me, in the sense of_ I would prefer to._ Of course, when contracted, _I would rather_ and _I had rather_ are undistinguishable.

I made a little search to see if I was totally mistaken. Here's what I found.



> Usage Note: [...]Sometimes had appears in these constructions, although this use of had seems to be growing less frequent: I had rather work with William than work for him. This usage was once widely criticized as a mistake, the result of a misanalysis of the contraction in sentences such as I'd rather stay. But it is in fact a survival of the subjunctive form had that appears in constructions like had better and had best, as in We had better leave now. This use of had goes back to Middle English and is perfectly acceptable.


Source
On the other hand, its interrogative form, _had you rather_ [+ bare infinitive], is probably something of a linguistic curio but I'm not really surprised to hear it from the mouth of Hannibal Lecter, a notoriouisly sophisticated gentleman (if I may say so ).

If both Farlex and I are wrong, then it just means Harris tried to make his character sound educated....and failed.


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## entangledbank

The _grammar_ is the same: it's the same construction. The _meaning_ is different because the salient parts 'better' and 'rather' have different meanings. I didn't say they were synonymous.


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## Loob

I had rather...
I would rather...
I'd rather... _(could mean either)_

Would you rather...?
Had you rather...?


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## Cagey

majlo said:


> Well, anyone who's seen the movie The Silence of the Lambs will admit that Dr Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, in the movie) is quite peculiar a guy; and yes, he was especially affected by Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster, in the movie).


Note: I meant affected in sense #2: "_speaking or behaving in an artificial way to make an impression."_


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## almufadado

As it is direct speech, it may as well be that there are words missing, as this is a full of innuendo scene: 

"- Had you (the thought of/planned) rather talk now ?"

In another form it would rather read: 

Clarisse planed to speak with Dr. Lecter that day and get it over with, but Lecter resisted, played his hard-to-get act. After so going around, he then asks her just to put her resolve to the test.  If she says yes, she has to indulge him and she loses, if she says no, she will loose because he will not give her what she desperatly needs, an aswer. 
Almufadado

The "rather" being the liaison between what Dr Lecter "reads" in Clarisse (she had a clear plan/intent) and what are the usual mental games "the lecter" play on people.

Just my "whole context" interpretation !


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## chamyto

Loob said:


> I had rather...
> I would rather...
> I'd rather... _(could mean either)_
> 
> Would you rather...?
> Had you rather...?


 
Had you rather is good for me... it is inversion, isn´t it ?


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## kalamazoo

It seems like a pretty ordinary AmE expression to me that can be used interchangeably with "would you rather."


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## Loob

kalamazoo said:


> It seems like a pretty ordinary AmE expression to me that can be used interchangeably with "would you rather."


Interesting - I don't think it works in BrE....


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## Cagey

Google returned 634 examples of "had you rather".  Some of them are literary, or dated, but here are a couple from everyday contexts:You're going  to be somewhere in a year; _had you rather_ be right where you are now or _had you rather_ be better off?  (Paraphrased from a commercial site.)

Which sport _had you rather_ watch, baseball, basketball, football, or something else? *Source*​


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## Forero

I hear "had you rather" about as often as "you had rather", so it does not sound odd to me, but I prefer to use _would_ with _rather_ unless I feel I have used up my _would_ quota.


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## kalamazoo

According to the OED, at least according to Cagey's post above, it's a form of the past subjunctive and apparently quite respectable. It may be another example of an older form that's been preserved in AmE but lost in BrE.


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## panjandrum

"Had you rather" appears once in the British National Corpus.
"Would you rather", 76 times.
"Had you rather" appears once in the Corpus of Contemporary American English.
"Would you rather", 398 times.

That seems to me to be a reasonable reflection of their relative use.
"Would you rather" appears quite often.
"Had you rather" is a once-in-a-blue-moon phenomenon.


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## kalamazoo

I wouldn't call "had you rather" or "had he rather" a once-in-a-blue moon phenomenon, no matter what the corpus says.  I am pretty sure I use it, and Cagey has adduced several hundred examples from Google at least, but it does seem pretty colloquial.  Did the corpus pick up the Silence of the Lambs usage?  Apparently the copy editor let it by.


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## sound shift

I don't think I have ever heard anyone say "Had you rather [infinitive]?"


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## kalamazoo

I checked around.  Actually I think the most common form in AmE is probably something like "I'd rather go tomorrow" - the Corpus of Contemporary American English finds 2,417 occurrences.  I think the abbreviation here is for "had" not for "would."  I think I would quite freely say something like "I had rather that you call him" with no problem.


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## LV4-26

kalamazoo said:


> [...] I think the abbreviation here is for "had" not for "would." [...]


 How can we possibly know? In my view, those who say "_I'd rather_" just say "_I'd rather_", full stop. I don't think they're aware of using either _had_ or _would_.

EDIT : At school, I was taught _'I had rather_". But I think it's been on the decline ever since. And I suspect it's even more true for _had you rather_.

NB : However, I'm still using the former and I'd be ready to join a society for its preservation .


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## kalamazoo

I would say either "I'd rather" or "I had rather" so they are interchangeable to me.  I think at least in writing, one doesn't abbreviate "I would" as "I'd" but speech is different of course.   Plus I have the impression from Cagey's post that in fact "I had" is in this construction a respectable alternate form of "I would" anyway, with a long history, so in a way it doesn't make too much difference what is being abbreviated.


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## Pedro y La Torre

_Had you rather talk now _sounds very strange to me, I can't say I've ever heard it. Due to the context I understood what the writer meant but otherwise I don't think I'd readily grasp the meaning.

In any case, it's a very, very rare construction on this side of the Atlantic.


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## G a

I don't have the info on hand to prove this right now, but here's the intuition:

Although we use _rather_ almost synonymously with _prefer _today, and although it was used almost slangishly to mean _quite _or _somewhat_ 100 years ago (_rather_ surprising, _rather_ fetching, or even just _Rather!_), the word originally was not used as a verb and didn't mean _prefer. _It had more the meaning of _instead _or _otherwise_: _to be, rather than to seem; I would rather die _(as in, I would die first, not, I would prefer to die).

We still use it this way today, but it is being corrupted and used almost as a verb; you can almost hear someone saying, "He rathers not to go out at night..."


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## G a

Also, I wonder if _I_ _had rather _comes from an incorrect dissection of _I'd rather_, where the contraction really stood for _I would_. I guess Shakespeare's quote would be evidence against that, though.


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## LV4-26

I believe I had rather became _I would rather_ at some point in time.
I think there was a time when both coexisted (and, to a certain extent, they still do).

Obviously,  _I had rather_ must have regularly been uttered as _I'd rather_. As _had_ and _would_ are undistinguishable when contracted, _had_ slowly shifted to _would_, perhaps under the influence of "_I *would* prefer (to)_".

Only my theory, though.


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## G a

Maybe so, but _I would rather _makes sense, if you take _would _in the original sense of willing something to be. What on earth would _I had rather _mean, except as some sort of colloquialism? Maybe it is the correct and original form, but I certainly don't understand it.


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## G a

In _I would prefer,would _is only the helping verb; in _I would rather,_ _would_ would be the main verb. 

In that sense, you could say, _I would to be a toad, _or, _I would rather be a toad; _but when would it ever be correct to say, _I had be a toad?_


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## Starfrown

G a said:


> Also, I wonder if _I_ _had rather _comes from an incorrect dissection of _I'd rather_, where the contraction really stood for _I would_. I guess Shakespeare's quote would be evidence against that, though.


See posts 5 and 13 above. Apparently, this is an idiomatic use of the past subjunctive "had" that stretches back into Middle English.


G a said:


> Maybe so, but _I would rather _makes sense, if you take _would _in the original sense of willing something to be. What on earth would _I had rather _mean, except as some sort of colloquialism? Maybe it is the correct and original form, but I certainly don't understand it.


I understand your point, and it is somewhat difficult to explain it.


G a said:


> In _I would prefer,would _is only the helping verb; in _I would rather,_ _would_ would be the main verb.
> 
> In that sense, you could say, _I would to be a toad, _or, _I would rather be a toad; _but when would it ever be correct to say, _I had be a toad?_


I don't find this a very compelling argument against this particular function of "had." Any one of us here might well use the following sentence:

"You had better go to school."

If, however, you take out the "better," it doesn't make much sense:

"You had go to school." 

The unacceptability of the latter doesn't have any bearing whatsoever on the former.


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## G a

@Starfrown,

That makes sense. Then I guess it's not this particular phrase that we need to understand, but the development of that use of _had. _At least, that's what's still puzzling me. 

I still wish, though, that we could return to the original adverbial use of _rather_, "rather" than the quasi-verbial way we often use it today.


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## Thomas Tompion

LV4-26 said:


> I believe I had rather became _I would rather_ at some point in time.
> I think there was a time when both coexisted (and, to a certain extent, they still do).
> 
> Obviously, _I had rather_ must have regularly been uttered as _I'd rather_. As _had_ and _would_ are undistinguishable when contracted, _had_ slowly shifted to _would_, perhaps under the influence of "_I *would* prefer (to)_".
> 
> Only my theory, though.


 _Would_ (or _should_) _rather_ is used in Chaucer several times.  I could find no case of _have_ (or _had_) _rather_, so it doesn't look like a simple historical progression, Jean-Michel.


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## LV4-26

Thanks, Thomas.
I must admit I focussed mainly on _had rather_ and didn't really try to trace back the use of _would rather_.
Not really a proper scientific approach, I'm afraid. <slaps himself>.


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## LV4-26

G a said:


> What on earth would _I had rather _mean, except as some sort of colloquialism? Maybe it is the correct and original form, but I certainly don't understand it.


As explained in the page I linked in a previous post and in the online etymological dictionary..
...


> Mod.Eng. he had better would have been O.E. him (dat.) wære betere.


Note that the sense of _have_ in _had better_ is the same as in _had rather._-- Of course, both phrases aren't synonyms. They're just using the same kind of _have._

_Had_ is the past subjunctive -- hence, expressing a "wish", here -- of _have_ and this particular _have_, as I understand it, means something like _be given_. Which justifies the former dative form in Old English (see the above quote from the online ED)
Hence _I had rather stay_ = (very roughly)  I wish I would be given to stay (rather than to leave).

But, as you see, and as Starfrown pointed out "it is somewhat difficult to explain it." . Mine was just a "desparate" attempt and I'm not even sure I'm correct in my interpretation of this '_have_'. 
However, one thing is sure, it is not a modal or an auxiliary (unllike _would_) and it does make sense.

EDIT : And yes, G a, I agree that _would rather_ (+ bare infinitive) is perfectly grammatical as well, if you consider that _will_ expresses volition.

EDIT2 : The contributors to this thread might find this to be of some interest.


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## G a

Hi, LV4-26,

  I'm getting a glimmer of an idea, and thanks for your explanation. Are you sure you put down all your native languages? If I had as good a grasp of French as you do of English, well...


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