I'm reading Mark Twain's The Prince and The Pauper and have come across this sentence in Chapter 23, after the woman has told the court that her pig is worth eight pence and is about to leave when an officer stops her asking to buy the pig for that amount.
The Dialogue:
The woman: "Eightpence, indeed! Thou'lt do no such thing. It cost me three
shillings and eightpence, good honest coin of the last reign, that
old Harry that's just dead ne'er touched or tampered with. A fig
for thy eightpence!"The officer: "Stands the wind in that quarter? Thou wast under oath, and so swore falsely when thou saidst the value was but eightpence. Come
straightway back with me before his worship, and answer for the
crime!–and then the lad will hang."
What does "Stands the wind in that quarter" mean?
Best Answer
Literally, it is a nautical term meaning "Is the wind coming from that direction?"
The actual meaning is "Is that how things are?" with an implication of either surprise or (here) cynicism.
It uses the archaic form of question without "do" support: in modern syntax it would read "Does the wind stand in that direction?" But it also uses an archaic sense of the word "stand".