to speak of | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic,usually negative)Sufficient;importantorsignificantenoughto be worth mentioning.not enoughto speak ofno [X]to speak ofQ: How many people heeded the advice to bring an umbrella? A: Not enoughto speak of.There was no air conditioningto speak of. [ = There was some, but it was wholly inadequate.]1792, Jean François Marmontel, C. Dennis, Robert Lloyd,Moral Tales By M. Marmontel Translated From the French by C. Dennis and R. Lloyd, page130:While he spoke thus, the good man leaped with joy; and as he was a widower, they advised him to put himself agian to the ranks. 'No raillery,' said he, 'if I were always as young, I might yet do somethingto speak of.1980, Charlotte Vale Allen,Promises, page79:There were no tall buildingsto speak of, certainly nothing in the way of skyscrapers, no brownstones[…]2013, Stephen Dixon,30 Pieces of a Novel,→ISBN:But some have no parents, or noneto speak of, and are living with a grandmother or uncle or married sister or sister who's not married but has three tots of her own to look after, or this unruly student's helping her to take care of them with babysitting or a paying after-school job.2012,David Walliams[pseudonym; David Edward Williams],Ratburger, London:HarperCollins Children’s Books,→ISBN:Completely disorientated by the explosion of dust, it was only now she realised she was running through Tina’s flat. It was even grottier than Zoe’s. There was no furniture or carpetto speak of.

Examples:

EN: "Didn't I advise you not to speak of your past?"
ES: -- ¿No te dije que no hablases de tu pasado?
EN: Ain't she clever to speak of answers?
ES: ¿Verdad que da unas respuestas geniales? Venga.
EN: No ladies to speak of, sir.
ES: - Ninguna mujer de la que habla, señor.
EN: This is not the time nor place to speak of such things, and I must ask you to remember you are in the house of God...
ES: Este no es el tiempo ni el lugar para hablar de esas cosas. Y debo pedirle que recuerde que ésta en la casa de Dios
EN: I don't even want to speak of it.
ES: Ni quiero oír hablar de ello.
EN: Anyhow, to speak of romantic past is one thing...
ES: De todos modos, hablar del pasado romántico es una cosa...
EN: If one day, sitting under the trees. The knave should find courage to speak of this to the queen.
ES: Si algún día, sentados bajos los árboles, ese granuja pudiera encontrar el valor para hablar con esa reina,
EN: He's a ham actor. That's no way to speak of an artist.
ES: - No es forma de hablar de un artista.
EN: I forbid you to speak of sleeping in my presence.
ES: ¡Le prohíbo hablar de dormir en mi presencia!
EN: - Oh, nothing to speak of.
ES: - ¿Y tú qué dices? - Nada importante.
EN: At our first meeting you forbade me to speak of love.
ES: En nuestro primer encuentro me prohibió hablar de amor.
EN: How can you have the impudence to speak of that now?
ES: ¿Cómo te atreves a mencionar eso?
EN: Why, even our... it's just too shocking to speak of... a woman of her age to bring back a gigolo from abroad.
ES: ¿Por qué, incluso nuestro...? es demasiado fuerte que una mujer de su edad se traiga a un gigoló del extranjero.
EN: It pains me to speak of this, Katusha.
ES: Me duele tener que hablarte de esto, Katusha.
EN: He doesn't want me to speak of it to you, but you may as well know.
ES: No quiere que te lo cuente, pero debes saberlo.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).