"more often than not" meaning in English

See more often than not in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adverb

Audio: En-au-more often than not.ogg [Australia]
Etymology: Origin obscure. Perhaps an ellipsis of more often than not [often], although this doesn't appear to be very well supported in writing. Alternatively, possibly meaning 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. Etymology templates: {{unk|en|title=obscure}} obscure, {{m|en|nought}} nought, {{m|en|naught}} naught Head templates: {{en-adv|-}} more often than not (not comparable)
  1. (idiomatic) Usually; more than half the time; more likely to be the case than not to be the case. Tags: idiomatic, not-comparable Synonyms: commonly, most of the time, usually, more often than naught, more often than nought Synonyms (in a typical manner): as often as not Translations (more likely to be the case than not): 通常 (tōngcháng) (Chinese Mandarin), 大多 (dàduō) (Chinese Mandarin), veelal (Dutch), vaker wel dan niet (Dutch), yli puolessa tapauksista (Finnish), le plus souvent (French), たいてい (taitei) (Japanese), اکثر اوقات٬ اکثرا٬ معمولا٬ علیالقاعده (Persian), allt som oftast (Swedish)

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for more often than not meaning in English (4.3kB)

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  "etymology_text": "Origin obscure. Perhaps an ellipsis of more often than not [often], although this doesn't appear to be very well supported in writing. Alternatively, possibly meaning 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.",
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  "lang_code": "en",
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          "text": "More often than not, tomato seeds will sprout even if they are a couple of years old.",
          "type": "example"
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        {
          "ref": "1962 September, Warren Smith, “The problems of coaching stock rostering and operation”, in Modern Railways, page 193",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 September 1, Tom Lamont, “The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "he would gather his courage and set out between the columned arches to ask one of the unaccompanied women to partner him. More often than not, their answer was no.",
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      "glosses": [
        "Usually; more than half the time; more likely to be the case than not to be the case."
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      "id": "en-more_often_than_not-en-adv-dgNjwgzv",
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        "(idiomatic) Usually; more than half the time; more likely to be the case than not to be the case."
      ],
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          "word": "as often as not"
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        {
          "word": "commonly"
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        {
          "word": "most of the time"
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        {
          "word": "usually"
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        {
          "word": "more often than naught"
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        {
          "word": "more often than nought"
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      "tags": [
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "tōngcháng",
          "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
          "word": "通常"
        },
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "dàduō",
          "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
          "word": "大多"
        },
        {
          "code": "nl",
          "lang": "Dutch",
          "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
          "word": "veelal"
        },
        {
          "code": "nl",
          "lang": "Dutch",
          "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
          "word": "vaker wel dan niet"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
          "word": "yli puolessa tapauksista"
        },
        {
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
          "word": "le plus souvent"
        },
        {
          "code": "ja",
          "lang": "Japanese",
          "roman": "taitei",
          "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
          "word": "たいてい"
        },
        {
          "code": "fa",
          "lang": "Persian",
          "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
          "word": "اکثر اوقات٬ اکثرا٬ معمولا٬ علیالقاعده"
        },
        {
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
          "word": "allt som oftast"
        }
      ]
    }
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      "tags": [
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      "text": "Audio (AU)"
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  "word": "more often than not"
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  "lang_code": "en",
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        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with unknown etymologies",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English uncomparable adverbs",
        "Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations"
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          "ref": "1962 September, Warren Smith, “The problems of coaching stock rostering and operation”, in Modern Railways, page 193",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2020 September 1, Tom Lamont, “The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "he would gather his courage and set out between the columned arches to ask one of the unaccompanied women to partner him. More often than not, their answer was no.",
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      ],
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        "Usually; more than half the time; more likely to be the case than not to be the case."
      ],
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        "(idiomatic) Usually; more than half the time; more likely to be the case than not to be the case."
      ],
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      "sense": "in a typical manner",
      "word": "as often as not"
    },
    {
      "word": "commonly"
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    {
      "word": "most of the time"
    },
    {
      "word": "usually"
    },
    {
      "word": "more often than naught"
    },
    {
      "word": "more often than nought"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "tōngcháng",
      "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
      "word": "通常"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "dàduō",
      "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
      "word": "大多"
    },
    {
      "code": "nl",
      "lang": "Dutch",
      "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
      "word": "veelal"
    },
    {
      "code": "nl",
      "lang": "Dutch",
      "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
      "word": "vaker wel dan niet"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
      "word": "yli puolessa tapauksista"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
      "word": "le plus souvent"
    },
    {
      "code": "ja",
      "lang": "Japanese",
      "roman": "taitei",
      "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
      "word": "たいてい"
    },
    {
      "code": "fa",
      "lang": "Persian",
      "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
      "word": "اکثر اوقات٬ اکثرا٬ معمولا٬ علیالقاعده"
    },
    {
      "code": "sv",
      "lang": "Swedish",
      "sense": "more likely to be the case than not",
      "word": "allt som oftast"
    }
  ],
  "word": "more often than not"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). 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.