toss-up
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Deverbal from toss up, suggesting tossing a coin.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]- (idiomatic) A decision in which neither choice is clearly favorable or unfavorable, or for which the outcome does not matter.
- It's really a toss-up between the red skirt with blue stripes and the blue skirt with red stripes. They both look good and fit well.
- 1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London:
- But at the moment when everything was going so well, there came one of those unforeseeable chances that reduce even the most circumspectly arranged plots to the significance of a mere toss-up.
- Either of two outcomes that are equally likely.
- 1889, Rudyard Kipling, “Only A Subaltern”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 151:
- “He’ll do,” said the Doctor, quietly. “It must have been a toss-up all through the night. ’Think you’re to be congratulated on this case.”
- 2013 January 11, Tom Shone, The Guardian[1]:
- No longer is the best picture going to be a toss-up between that troika of national-historical heavies: Argo, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty. Instead, a warm welcome back for Life of Pi, widely dismissed by many as "this year's Hugo" but this column's dark-horse pick from October.
- The toss of a coin used to decide some issue.
- A toss-up question.
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]a decision in which neither choice is clearly favorable or unfavorable, or for which the outcome does not matter
|
either of two outcomes that are equally likely — see also fifty-fifty, half and half, uncertainty, tombola
|
|