Definition of "as" [as]

• To the same extent or degree; equally: The child sang as sweetly as a nightingale. (adverb)
• For instance: large carnivores, as the bear or lion. (adverb)
• When taken into consideration in a specified relation or form: this definition as distinguished from the second one. (adverb)
• To the same degree or quantity that. Often used as a correlative after so or as: You are as sweet as sugar. The situation is not so bad as you suggest. (conjunction)
• In the same manner or way that: Think as I think. (conjunction)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• ""Very good," interrupted Jack; "but the words 'when' and 'as soon as' imply a great deal; _when_, or _as soon as_, we know anything, the mystery of course disappears."
• "In all of our countries women have been in the� forefront of the struggle for freedom and liberation, not� only for themselves but for others, as well as� themselves, to create democracies instead of� hypocrisies which seek to deny them equality."
• "But one of the main problems with criticism in general is that as an obligatory gesture it has to take whatever its object is *as* itself."