Where does as it were come from?

It is traced to Middle English.

as it were

Word Rarity Common

Frequency: Zipf frequency 6.13 in modern English

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adv

adv

adv

"With so much construction and renovation going on all around him, he was more or less living in a new city now, as it were. [His city is not newly founded, and it has been neither renamed nor moved, but in some practical way it is true that he does not live in the same city that he used to live in.]"
"God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the ſtrength of an Vnicorne."
"Yet so strong is the parental ambition among those Polygons who are, as it were, on the fringe of the Circular class, that it is very rare to find a Nobleman of that position in society, who has neglected to place his first-born in the Circular Neo-Therapeutic Gymnasium before he has attained the age of a month."
"[T]here was no very clear vision, to these people, of supra-mundane beings, sitting apart and ordaining the affairs of earth, as it were from a distance."
"She gave all of the women seated at the restaurant food for thought, as it were."
"Concerns that cloud seeding might “steal” water from an area a cloud is traveling toward—robbing Peter to water Paul, as it were—have been dispelled."

From Middle English as it were, as hyt were, als it were, als hit were, from Old English *ealswā hit wǣre, attested only as swā hit wǣre and swylċe hit wǣre (“as it were”, literally “as it would be”). Compare Dutch als het ware.

as if

as if after a fashion in a sense in a way no pun intended