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In Red-headed League from The adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a character named Wilson describes a weird sight of hundreds of red haired men crowding the area to Holmes. By his account he had been really shocked by this crowd, yet he says 'I should not have thought there were so many in the whole country as were brought together by that single advertisement.' By context I think he means he wouldn't've thought it, but I don't...understand the use of 'should not have' here..

Jay
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2 Answers2

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In our (chiefly British) English lessons in a German high school in the late 1970s we learned that shall and its past should are simply the first person forms of "will" and "would". I think this use has since then become rare, certainly in the U.S. The use has shifted towards or focused on assertion and moral obligation ("The plaintiff shall...", "I know I shouldn't").

In your example, an American Wilson of today would probably just say "I wouldn't have thought ...".

Peter - Reinstate Monica
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  • As would a British Wilson. But perhaps not a Sir Humphrey. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 19 '16 at 11:12
  • I expect that use was somewhat rare even in the 1970s. Ngram. – Peter Shor Feb 19 '16 at 12:23
  • @PeterShor Entirely possible. The text books' texts may have been a decade old, easily, and reflected past use back then. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Feb 19 '16 at 12:25
  • And in high school German we were taught that sollen is exactly the same as should... the key concept being "obligation". – Spencer Apr 20 '17 at 10:37
  • @PeterShor For some reason the answer received an upvote today; I (re-?)visited your ngram and find it quite interesting. I probably had that lesson as a 12-year-old (Latin being my first foreign language) in 1976, in the later phase of its usage decline. But assuming that the book was essentially 10 years old and incorporated at the time of its writing a version of English two or three years old, it reflects a state of English that still very much used should as past tense of shall. Interesting how quickly that usage changed, in a bit more than a generation. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Apr 10 '22 at 00:30
  • @PeterShor Looking at the asymptotically declining curve it is a fair bet that in 1957 the people who used it as past tense of shall gradually left without new writers entering the arena. The majority of the population must have grown up without it starting about 20 or so years earlier, between the wars. The old-fashioned former majority population gradually stopped writing, and died, and thus that use disappeared with its users during the next 35 years, save a minority who continues to use it, where the curve levels out. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Apr 10 '22 at 00:41
  • @PeterShor, as a student in an Australian primary school in the 1950s and 60s I was taught that shall and should were the first person versions of will and would, and the converse. Even then the modern usage was normal for us, though the "correct" usage was still found in then-current books. – Peter Apr 10 '22 at 03:08
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As the OED notes, this use of should is a colloquial expression of the "strong affirmation" of a statement. Here

I should not have thought ...

is the equivalent of

I definitely would not have thought.

deadrat
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