# What do British folks mean by "Rather!"?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-british-folks-mean-by-rather/976575>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 15, 2022, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-british-folks-mean-by-rather/976575 "2022-12-15T11:23:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2022, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-british-folks-mean-by-rather/976575/21 "2022-12-16T11:28:06Z")

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In what way? To be clear, I didn’t mean to suggest that anyone should limit their vocabulary (certainly not when it comes to the, um, rather innocuous word “rather”), just that from the relatively little that I know about you, I was surprised it was an expression you used. Nothing wrong with that - I’m here to learn things like this, after all.

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**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2022, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-british-folks-mean-by-rather/976575/22 "2022-12-16T11:29:12Z")

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My explanation is in the edit above. The slightly comic or whimsical nature underlines the emphasis

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