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While I understand the phrase for the time being completely as an idiom, I have no guess where the word being comes from, how it functions or, for that matter, what it adds to the discussion. Does it just mean for the present time, with being as an expression of the present-ness of the time? Does being ever function in this way in some other context? Perhaps the powers that be (hooray for the subjunctive!)?
Thoughts?
"This is a guess. This is only a guess."
etymonline cites "for the time" as being directly translated from the Latin pro tempore. I cannot think of a use of "pro tempore being" that makes sense, so my guess is that "being" was added after the English translation became popular.
Being feels like a reference to the condition of the current time. That is, for the time, conditions being what they are. For the time doesn't have the same feeling of referencing conditions - that is, it feels even more indefinite. The only way to lend any credence to this would be to find an older version of the phrase where something more does follow the word being or where something is interjected between time and being... which a quick and dirty Google search didn't turn up.
I apologize for only offering theories with no actual work behind them. 🙂
Glenn,
I think it is an expression of "existence". While time is always going forward and is the foundation of inexorable change, "for the time being" denotes a period where no change occurs, that is, the circumstances exist for a period of time. "Human being" might be related in that it also denotes existence (although not as fluid as a period of time).
These are just my thoughts--there is no expertise to back this up.
Emmett
I'm not sure that this is a related usage (nor that it's not), but something I find with alarming frequency in one of my other habitats, computer graphics forums and blogs, is the phrase "being as," or sometimes "being that": "Being as I'm a newbie, I'm confused by…" which I interpret to mean since or inasmuch as. Is this widespread?
Peter
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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