as well
- 1In addition to what has already been mentioned.
The forecast looked gloomy, so she packed a raincoat as well.
If you're stopping at the store, could you pick up some milk as well?
Similartoo, additionally
- 2With the same effect or result, used to say that one course of action would serve no worse than another.
With all this traffic, we might as well walk as sit in the car.
You may as well talk to a wall as try to change his mind.
Note
A construction more than a meaning: it most often follows might or may, and a second as names the alternative; they might as well walk as drive. An older, more rhetorical pattern drops the modal and opens the sentence, dismissing an idea as no more sensible than an absurd one: "As well speak of the female liver," Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote in Women and Economics (1898).
- 3Used for emphasis, usually at the end of a remark, to mean actually or really.
“That new café does brilliant coffee.” “It does as well. I'm in there every morning.”
“She's grown ever so tall since last summer.” “She has as well!”
Similarindeed
Note
Heard in relaxed British talk, typically in a reply that agrees with what was just said: "She looks so much like her mum." "Oh my god, she does as well!" Nothing is being added, which is how to tell it from the plain sense of addition that it sounds exactly like. In writing it reads as speech, so it suits dialogue rather than formal prose.
- 4Used as a reply to say that the same is true of the speaker; me too.
When Thandi admitted she was nervous about the exam, Sipho nodded and answered, “As well.”
“I could do with a cup of tea.” “As well. I'll put the kettle on.”
Similarlikewise
Note
A South African reply that is complete on its own: where other speakers answer "Me too," a South African may simply say "As well." Elsewhere the two words rarely make up a whole answer; they close a longer clause, the way the everyday sense of addition does in I'll have tea as well.
Practice
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