lest

[5jj]

They are grammar tests for admission to Police Academy,...

The mind boggles. I'd be very surprised if the average English, American, Australian, etc police officer would recognise a 'lest' if it jaywalked in front of him/her. Why a Romanian police officer should be expected to deal with this is beyond my ken.

[Mr_Ben]

Forsooth! Never have I tasted so sweet a donut!

Verily! Yet ought you not proceed with caution, lest it should stain your officer's frock?

[5jj]

The position is 13 934.

I think that says it all.

[5jj]

@ SirGod,

Is there an approximate equivalent in Romanian of 'lest' that is commonly used in the language? If there is, it would explain, but not justify, why 'lest' appears in the tests so frequently.

[birdeen's call]

I think that says it all.

I'd say that it says that it's a word that is used sometimes, but not often. Take a look at some of the word's neighbours:

13 921 intrigued (past participle of lexical verb (e.g. given, worked))
13 922 attempts (-s form of lexical verb (e.g. gives, works))
13 923 destroy (base form of lexical verb (e.g. give, work))
13 924 intended (general adjective)
13 927 disgusting (general adjective)
13 930 witness (infinitive)
13 931 negotiating (singular common noun)
13 932 vine (singular common noun)

(All numbers added by me. Explanations copied from UCREL CLAWS7 Tagset)

Of course, all of these words have other forms and "lest" has only one, so they would jump over many one-form words if lemmas were counted instead of distinct strings. But then also "lest" would have a much better position, because the list would be much shorter. I'd say 13 934 is quite a nice achievement for such a word.

PS: I'm feeling quite uncertain about the way I'm using the data. I'd better stop.

[5jj]

PS: I'm feeling quite uncertain about the way I'm using the data. I'd better stop.

At least you seem to know what lemmas are.

[SirGod]

The mind boggles. I'd be very surprised if the average English, American, Australian, etc police officer would recognise a 'lest' if it jaywalked in front of him/her. Why a Romanian police officer should be expected to deal with this is beyond my ken.

I don't think that they want you to recognize a lest when you hear it. Solving their questions proves them that you have a good knowledge and comprehension of English's grammar, even if their questions are about things rarely or never used in conversations.

@ SirGod,

Is there an approximate equivalent in Romanian of 'lest' that is commonly used in the language? If there is, it would explain, but not justify, why 'lest' appears in the tests so frequently.

As far as I know, it doesn't have an equivalent on its own, we simply translate it as a phrase. But I highly doubt that someone translating from Romanian into English will translate the phrase as lest.

[Tdol]

They are grammar tests for admission to Police Academy, Foreign Languages and ASE (one of our universities). And the book includes things like "lest... should" because it is highly possible to see them in your exam paper.

It sounds as if they're using a very traditional syllabus- it strikes me as a rather bizarre item to test for admission to a Police Academy as it's a rare and very formal word.

[SirGod]

It sounds as if they're using a very traditional syllabus- it strikes me as a rather bizarre item to test for admission to a Police Academy as it's a rare and very formal word.

It is their choice and I am not against it. These things are interesting to me, even if I barely come across them nowadays.

[Anaalvarez]

What are the meanings of "lest", and different uses of this word?.

Thank you all of you for your answers. I had never heard before this word, but it appears in an article in The Washington Post, taking about American Stars endorse some products.