'I daresay' or 'I dare say' some difficulties. Please shed some light onto this

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
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Hello everyone,

I’ve been looking up ‘daresay’ (BrE) and ‘dare say’ (AmE) in lots of different dictionaries. Some explanations are rather complicated, unless I read the explanations too fast.

Yesterday, I watched ‘Who’s Killing the Great Chefs of Europe.’ starring George Segal, Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Morley.

At a certain moment, Maxmilian Vandervere, publisher of a gourmet magazine grabs a little bowl from one his Chinese employees. He starts eating and when finishes he gives the bowl back. Then, the following conversation takes place:

Mr. Vandervere: 'My dear, man, this was simply delicious. What was it?
Chinese employee: ‘My lunch!’
Mr. Vanderevere: 'Yes, I daresay, but what was it?
It’s very obvious that Vandervere liked the food in the bowl, but had no idea what it what the ingredients were…

I would like to know what ‘Yes, I daresay’ really means here?

  • Is: ‘Yes, I already thought so.’ a possibilty?

The sentences I read in CFED and Thesaurus-online, are the follwoing ones:

"She’s got a lot of admirers. “I daresay - she’svery beautiful” (I’ve interpreted daresay as: “I agree.”)
“He gets paid a lot of money, but I daresay (that) he earns it.” '(My interpretation here is: '…, but I think that he deserves it.")

My last questions is: is this phrase still used a lot, or not?

Thanks.

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‘I daresay’ is used a lot in conversation and suggests - That’s possibly true/That may well be true’. It is an expression of little significance and has about the same value as ‘possibly’.

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I have to answer you very directly.There is no such a thing as universal expressions with equal value on every single language.“It is raining cats and dogs” for example has its own expression on maybe every single language. The same expression on French is: “Il pleut comme une vâche qui pisse”.You can translate it even as suppose or there is no doubt.

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I really don’t know what your point is. Why are you talking about comparing one expression in one language with the similar idea in another language? You seem to be confused about my use of ‘value’. All I am saying is that ‘I daresay’ has the same significance, strength, meaning in English as ‘possibly’.

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Thank you very much, Alan. I really appreciate it.

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