Weighing up and qualifying

The thirteenth entry is à tout le moins, and it is one of three French phrases that English answers with the same two words. « At least » covers all three; French keeps them apart, and what separates them is not register but job. Au moins counts. It puts a floor under a quantity, and something measurable follows it: il faut au moins trois signatures, elle a attendu au moins une heure. Du moins counts nothing at all. It pulls back from what has just been said and narrows it to what the speaker will vouch for: il viendra, du moins c’est ce qu’il m’a dit. And à tout le moins, the entry here, is the formal one. It names the smallest step that ought to be taken, it argues rather than measures, and it lives in a report or a judgment rather than in speech. The danger runs mostly from English outwards: a writer who owns only « at least » reaches for au moins every time and turns a concession into arithmetic. Render this entry as « at the very least », and keep « or so I am told » in reserve for du moins.