of course

Less common meanings

4. 4
   usual customadjectivearchaic

   Forming part of ordinary custom or behavior, and so expected as natural.

   At the firm, working late before a deadline is treated as a matter of course.

   I am not using a mere phrase of course, when I say that the feelings with which I bear a part in the ceremony of this day, are such as I find it difficult to utter in words.

   1849, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Miscellaneous Writings

   Note

   The adjective follows its noun, and today it survives almost only in a matter of course. Earlier writers used it more freely: Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Francesca Carrara (1834) imagines affection becoming a thing of course, and Macaulay in 1849 insists he is not using a mere phrase of course. Outside the set phrase it now sounds archaic.

5. 5
   in due timeadverbarchaic

   In due time, or as a natural result of what came before.

   Not tarrying long enough in the brain to be subject to reflection, the next sensations, of course, obliterate them.

   1790, Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men

   It was at one time made a question whether giving the royal assent to a single bill did not of course put an end to the session.

   1845, Henry John Stephen, New commentaries on the laws of England

   Note

   Modern readers easily mistake this older meaning for the everyday "obviously". When Tobias Smollett wrote in 1751 that envy and jealous rage followed of course, he meant they came as a result; Henry John Stephen in 1845 asks, in the same sense, whether a single royal assent did not of course end the session. The usage is now rare.