How can I get this expression? (excerpt in literary work)
(previously, protagonist passed through woods lonesomely for a pretty long time and he met this guy, the traveller)
Being thus importuned, the traveller⏤who was as ill-looking a fellow as one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods⏤appeared to hesitate a little ......

In this phrase, does 'desire to' mean just as usual, or the other?
Because if it means as 'want to, hope to...', it seems unnatural considering contextually.
Is there anyone who could help me understand?

1) the traveller looks hard-feature, bad, rough...etc. and no one probably wants to meet him in a solitary forest.
2) the traveller is bad-looking guy but the protagonist looks bad now, too. And the protagonist might want to meet him in a forest, because he was so lonely with no one to talk with.

Question

How can I get this expression? (excerpt in literary work)
(previously, protagonist passed through woods lonesomely for a pretty long time and he met this guy, the traveller)
Being thus importuned, the traveller⏤who was as ill-looking a fellow as one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods⏤appeared to hesitate a little ......

In this phrase, does 'desire to' mean just as usual, or the other?
Because if it means as 'want to, hope to...', it seems unnatural considering contextually.
Is there anyone who could help me understand?

1) the traveller looks hard-feature, bad, rough...etc. and no one probably wants to meet him in a solitary forest.
2) the traveller is bad-looking guy but the protagonist looks bad now, too. And the protagonist might want to meet him in a forest, because he was so lonely with no one to talk with.

Answer

It's something you're more likely to see in writing than hear in speech.

"As  as you'd want to meet." (or anything similar) basically means that you wouldn't want to meet anyone more .

So, in this case, meeting someone this rough-looking *might* be okay in some circumstances, but you definitely wouldn't want to meet anyone rougher-looking.

Answer

"who was as ill-looking a fellow as one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods"
This means the man looked like he was going to cause trouble. He is the last person you would want to meet in a secluded, scary, place like these woods. The writer is saying that he looks like someone that will attack/rob you.

"Being thus importuned" means he was hassled/bothered/approached by the traveller.

Essentially, a scary looking guy has come up to him in a scary looking place and he is probably a bit nervous about it.

This is quite a tricky text to read. I would have to stop and think about words and phrasing quite regularly while reading this.

Answers · 2

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