meaning - What does "pray" mean in phrases like "pray proceed"?


Is this an archaic form of "please proceed"? I have never heard in in speech but sometimes it appears in novels. My version of "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" is full of it, apparently in place of "please".



Answer



The NOAD installed on my Mac Mini reported the following definition for pray.



adverb formal or archaic
used as a preface to polite requests or instructions: pray continue.
• used as a way of adding ironic or sarcastic emphasis to a question: and what, pray, was the purpose of that?



In the first example, you can replace pray with please.


Similar definition is given by the Oxford Living Dictionaries.


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