Word.ws English Dictionary

or should I say

or should I say phrase: said by someone after a statement, meaning to precede a pun or another kind of clever rephrasing.

Phrase

or should I say?

  1. (colloquial, humorous) Said by someone after a statement, meaning to precede a pun or another kind of clever rephrasing
    • As the presence of any considerable number of priests on an ocean steamer is supposed to bring rough weather, so the addition of a few hundred parsons to the population of Edinburgh is believed to induce rain,—or perhaps I should say, more rain.1898, Kate Douglas Wiggin, chapter 8, in Penelope’s Progress […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC

Questions about or should I say

What does or should I say mean?
Or should I say means said by someone after a statement, meaning to precede a pun or another kind of clever rephrasing.
What part of speech is or should I say?
Or should I say is a phrase.

Words near or should I say in the dictionary

  1. OR gate
  2. OR gates
  3. or hor
  4. or it didn't happen
  5. or not
  6. or should I say
  7. or so
  8. or so on
  9. or something
  10. or what
  11. or words to that effect

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: or should I say (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-or should I say.wav.

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