your mileage may vary
phraseEtymology
The United States Environmental Protection Agency requires all new vehicles to undergo a set of standard emissions tests which simulate city and highway driving. Part of the test measures estimated city and highway gas (petrol) mileage estimates. Since no test can exactly simulate all driving habits and conditions, the actual gas mileage of each vehicle will vary. As a result, when these estimated mileage claims from automobile manufacturers appear in advertisements, they are almost always accompanied with the standard disclaimer “your mileage may vary”.
Definitions
It may work differently in your situation, or be different in your experience.
- The battery lasts a day in my phone, but your mileage may vary.
- When that definition is executed, the metadata for the temporary table is put into your schema (most likely—your mileage may vary), but no space is allocated to hold data.
- In other words, your mileage may vary and my disk-size figures are just estimates provided for your convenience.
Used to express a possible difference in taste
Used to express a possible difference in taste: this is just my opinion, your opinion may be different.
- I think that red dress looks really good on you, but your mileage may vary, of course.
- Your mileage may vary when it comes to the over-the-top carnage and in-your-face machismo, but it’s impressive just how bonkers Fate [The Fate of the Furious] is, like a litter of kittens hopped up on grade-A catnip.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for your mileage may vary. 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