word usage - Using "I had rather" instead of "I would rather"


While commuting to work, I encountered a bumper sticker that said



"I had rather be on/Cape Point Fishing".



I found this curious, since I always thought that the correct expression would be "I would rather be...", instead of "I had rather be".


Is there a joke I'm not getting, or was this bumper sticker just incorrect?



Answer



The OED describes had rather as the past subjunctive, meaning ‘would have’, and used idiomatically with adjectives (or adverbs) in the comparative, ‘to express preference or comparative desirability’.


Not all grammarians would now agree with the description ‘past subjunctive’ but the had rather construction is still found in British English. The British National Corpus yields 21 examples, but some are false positives. The Corpus of Contemporary American English has 23 records, but, as it is four and a half times bigger than the BNC, the incidence is relatively smaller.


It is no doubt true that the difference is often fudged by the contraction, as when Simon and Garfunkel sang in ‘El Condor Paso’:



I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail



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