Meaning of "appear" in "She appears to have had two children"

Question

What is the meaning of appear in the following examples:

She appears to have had two children.
He appears to have been elected as the first pope outside of Europe.
Their aircraft appears to have crashed near Kathmandu.
Their offer appears to be the most attractive.

Or, for example, when you try to open a file in Autodesk Simulation Mechanical, you see an error message like:

Warning: [file] appears to be open already.

"It *looks like* she had two children" "It *looks like* their aircraft has crashed..." — Jim, Sep 25 '15 at 15:38
@Jim Couldn't it be "She turns out/happens to have had two children?" — Elian, Sep 25 '15 at 15:46
It is stating a fact and at the same time conveying mild surprise (and distancing the speaker) from the reality of the fact. When a person appears at a party, it is as if they have suddenly, unexpectedly "popped into existence". Similarly for these facts. They're true, but mildly surprising. — Dan Bron, Sep 25 '15 at 15:57
@Elian- No. "turns out" is used when the uncertainty associated with a piece of information is removed. "appears to" is used specifically to introduce uncertainty in the statement. — Jim, Sep 25 '15 at 16:00
@Elian- For example. "It appeared liked my wife had taken the dog and run out on me." (I don't know for certain; I am just guessing based on appearances) "it turns out she was just taking the dog to the vet and then dropped by her sister's house for a few hours afterwards." (Now, I know for certain what really happened.) — Jim, Sep 25 '15 at 16:12
@Jim Funny, always thought that "appear to" in some instances meant just about the same thing as "turn out," as in "Warning: appear to be open already" and "He appears to have been elected President of Tunisia in the runoff election on December 21." — Elian, Sep 25 '15 at 16:13
@Elian- In both those examples, the "speaker" is making a guess based on what they can currently see, but they don't know for sure. "... I tried to open the file, but the open call failed... that could be because it's already open, so I'll say it appears to be open." AND "Based on the observable information our best guess is that the he was elected president... but we won't no for certain until the official statement is released." — Jim, Sep 25 '15 at 16:17

John Lawler · Answer 1 · 2021-08-19T14:26:48.477

Appear is an unusual verb in a number of ways:

it's a sense verb of sight, but isn't restricted to visual appearance;
it's a flip verb, in that the subject isn't the perceiver but rather the source of the percept
(like that scares me rather than I'm scared of that);
and it's so close to the meaning of seem that it has virtually the same syntax as seem,
which is quite a lot of syntax indeed.

It's hard to figure out the meaning, because there isn't very much. Seem and appear are one-place (intransitive) verbs that take clauses as their logical subjects, and essentially say nothing about the subject clause, except that it represents a guess.

But English does not like long sentences with the verb last. So there are syntactic rules like Raising to break these awful sentences into something that sounds like English.

*For their offer to be the most attractive seems/appears.
=== Subject-Raising ==>
Their offer appears to be the most attractive.
*For Harry to have won seems/appears.
=== Subject-Raising ==>
Harry seems/appears to have won.
*For there to be a party tonight seems/appears.
=== Subject-Raising ==>
There seems/appears to be a party tonight.

Dan Bron · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-25T16:19:56.620

3

Here, the sense employed is #2 from the ODO link you provided:

Seem; give the impression of being:

[WITH INFINITIVE]: she appeared not to know what was happening

Note the example given matches your own.

In practice, this rhetoric is typically used when we want to state a fact while simultaneously conveying mild surprise, or distancing ourselves¹, from the reality of that fact.

If you need a mnemonic, consider that when a person appears at a party, it is as if they have suddenly, unexpectedly "popped into existence". Similarly for these facts. They're true, but mildly surprising.

¹ _{The alleged baby-candy-stealer went on to state...}

edited Sep 25 '15 at 16:19

answered Sep 25 '15 at 16:15

Dan Bron

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Or they may not be true, but they are our best guess based on the currently observable information. – Jim Sep 25 '15 at 16:19
@Jim It appears [=is clear after further evidence] I was way off on that one... :-) – Elian Sep 25 '15 at 16:24
@DanBron Couldn't "She appeared not to know what was happening" be alternately rephrased as "She appeared to not know what was happening?" – Elian Sep 25 '15 at 16:34
@Elian If you're asking my permission to brazenly split your infinitives, you have it, captain! – Dan Bron Sep 25 '15 at 16:35
1

@Dan: All I can say is you appear to know what you're talking about. I'll leave it to you (and any others reading this comment) to decide if that implies I'm "mildly surprised" that you should be so knowledgeable (or perhaps I'm actually sceptical, implying that maybe the semblance of knowledge might not match the reality! :) – FumbleFingers Sep 25 '15 at 16:42
@DanBron Seriously, I truly believed that a phrase like "the file appears (to be) corrupted" was pretty much equivalent to saying "it appears [=it is clear/obvious] that the file is corrupted." Can you dig that? :-) – Elian Sep 25 '15 at 17:01
@Elian Oh for sure. The "it turns out that" is a very common sense of "appears". It's just not the one employed in your examples (or the rhetorical device I'm describing in this answer). See FumbleFinger's little ribbing, above. Are you familiar with the heavily-inflected use of Apparently, to start a sentence communicating some juicy bit of gossip? Same thing going on here. – Dan Bron Sep 25 '15 at 17:05
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You can also describe this as a tentative conclusion. – GalacticCowboy Sep 25 '15 at 19:20
@GalacticCowboy Oh, good one! – Dan Bron Sep 25 '15 at 19:23

Meaning of "appear" in "She appears to have had two children"

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