by rights

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /baɪ ˈɹaits/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aɪts

Prepositional phrase

by rights

1. Alternative form of by right
   • 1863 October 24, Charles Dickens, “Titbull’s Alms-houses”, in The Uncommercial Traveller, new edition, London: Chapman & Hall, […], published 1866, →OCLC, page 192, column 2:

     Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of any little matters which ought to be ours by rights, I cannot say for certain; but the opinion of the old ones is they do.

   • 1884, H[enry] Rider Haggard, chapter VII, in Dawn […], volume I, London: Hurst and Blackett, […], →OCLC, page 101:

     He told me not to tell anyone. I suppose that I should not by rights have told you.

   • 2007 September 27, Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood, spoken by Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), Los Angeles, Calif.: Paramount Vantage; Miramax Films, →OCLC:

     The rest will be speculators, that's men trying to get between you and the oilmen to get some of the money that ought, by rights, come to you.

   • 2011 February 21, Eilidh Nisbet, “February 1951”, in Giddy Old School: The Diary of a Swot 1948 to 1951, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire: AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 268:

     By rights I ought to have been lolling in bed this morning, but Nancy was ill and I had to goalkeep for the Second.

   • 2024 May 29, Simon Hattenstone, “The radical, ravishing rebirth of Tracey Emin: ‘I didn’t want to die as some mediocre YBA’”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     You Keep Fucking Me is one of the highlights of a new exhibition of her paintings, all of them created since her diagnosis with a cancer that should, by rights, have seen her off.

Usage notes

• Often used in the form by all rights.