Contextualizebeta

more often than not

adv

Etymology

Origin obscure. Semantically equivalent to, and often understood as, an ellipsis of more often than not so. Possibly sometimes understood as more often than zero (see nought and naught), especially in reference to scales or gauges where mark zero represents the midpoint of measurement or frequency.

Definitions

  1. Usually

    Usually; more than half the time; more likely to be the case than not to be the case.

    • Near-synonyms: commonly, frequently; usually; see also Thesaurus:usually
    • More often than not, tomato seeds will sprout even if they are a couple of years old.
    • Regular passengers become familiar with their train and attempts to change its make-up or any other aspect of its working are more often than not frowned upon, even though the change is probably for the better.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for more often than not. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA