英文文法: “would not/wouldn’t” 意思和用法
(prepared by: alexcwlin; edited by: Adam Lam)

Question

In my translation of Lesson 0147手捧花盆的孩子, a line reads:
“Xiongri told the Emperor everything on how the seeds would not germinate.”

A reader asked: “I can't understand why use the word "would".

alexcwlin comments:

You likely are thinking “would” as being the Past Tense of the Verb “will”, and wonder why I would apply “will” to an event which had already happened (i.e., germination of the seeds).

Good question!

Another meaning of “would” is “was able to” and “would not” is “was not unable to”.

Dictionary definition explains the phrase “would not” mainly has two meanings:

1.      used to indicate something which didn’t happen, even though efforts were made to make it happen,
e.g., The door wouldn’t budge no matter how hard we tried to get it open.

2.      used to indicate refusal of someone to do something he was asked to do,
e.g., His mother wouldn’t give him any money.

So, you should be able to understand the sentence better if I rewrite it as:

“Xiongri told the Emperor everything on how the seeds did not germinate despite his efforts to make it happen.”