"as often as not" meaning in English

See as often as not in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Prepositional phrase

Audio: en-au-as often as not.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{head|en|prepositional phrase}} as often as not
  1. (idiomatic) More or less half of the time; on many occasions but not always; frequently. Tags: idiomatic Related terms: more often than not
    Sense id: en-as_often_as_not-en-prep_phrase-f5lA0PEv Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for as often as not meaning in English (2.2kB)

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "as often as not",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1841, Charles Dickens, chapter 7, in The Old Curiosity Shop",
          "text": "\"[T]hese old people—there's no trusting them, Fred. . . . [Y]ou can't calculate upon 'em, and even then they deceive you just as often as not.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1896, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Persons of the Tale”, in Fables",
          "text": "I am a man that tries to do his duty, and makes a mess of it as often as not.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1910, H. G. Wells, chapter 7, in The History of Mr. Polly",
          "text": "[I]f he discovered a sale where there were books he would as often as not waste half the next day in going again to acquire a job lot of them.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1918, Edgar Wallace, chapter 7, in The Man Who Knew",
          "text": "The hall porter said that, as often as not, the flat was untenanted.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 October 24, Eamon Javers, “Spies and Co.”, in New York Times, retrieved 2013-10-29",
          "text": "As often as not, the perpetrators have been other Americans — motivated not by patriotism for a foreign flag, but by simple profit.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "More or less half of the time; on many occasions but not always; frequently."
      ],
      "id": "en-as_often_as_not-en-prep_phrase-f5lA0PEv",
      "links": [
        [
          "More or less",
          "more or less"
        ],
        [
          "always",
          "always"
        ],
        [
          "frequently",
          "frequently"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) More or less half of the time; on many occasions but not always; frequently."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "more often than not"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-as often as not.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/00/En-au-as_often_as_not.ogg/En-au-as_often_as_not.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/En-au-as_often_as_not.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "as often as not"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "as often as not",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "more often than not"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English prepositional phrases",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1841, Charles Dickens, chapter 7, in The Old Curiosity Shop",
          "text": "\"[T]hese old people—there's no trusting them, Fred. . . . [Y]ou can't calculate upon 'em, and even then they deceive you just as often as not.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1896, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Persons of the Tale”, in Fables",
          "text": "I am a man that tries to do his duty, and makes a mess of it as often as not.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1910, H. G. Wells, chapter 7, in The History of Mr. Polly",
          "text": "[I]f he discovered a sale where there were books he would as often as not waste half the next day in going again to acquire a job lot of them.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1918, Edgar Wallace, chapter 7, in The Man Who Knew",
          "text": "The hall porter said that, as often as not, the flat was untenanted.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2012 October 24, Eamon Javers, “Spies and Co.”, in New York Times, retrieved 2013-10-29",
          "text": "As often as not, the perpetrators have been other Americans — motivated not by patriotism for a foreign flag, but by simple profit.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "More or less half of the time; on many occasions but not always; frequently."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "More or less",
          "more or less"
        ],
        [
          "always",
          "always"
        ],
        [
          "frequently",
          "frequently"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) More or less half of the time; on many occasions but not always; frequently."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-as often as not.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/0/00/En-au-as_often_as_not.ogg/En-au-as_often_as_not.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/En-au-as_often_as_not.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "as often as not"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.