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Odds and ends   /ɑdz ənd ɛndz/   Listen
noun
Odds  n.  
1.
Difference in favor of one and against another; excess of one of two things or numbers over the other; inequality; advantage; superiority; hence, excess of chances; probability. The odds are often expressed by a ratio; as, the odds are three to one that he will win, i. e. he will win three times out of four "Preeminent by so much odds." "The fearful odds of that unequal fray." "The odds Is that we scarce are men and you are gods." "There appeared, at least, four to one odds against them." "All the odds between them has been the different scope... given to their understandings to range in." "Judging is balancing an account and determining on which side the odds lie."
2.
Quarrel; dispute; debate; strife; chiefly in the phrase at odds. "Set them into confounding odds." "I can not speak Any beginning to this peevish odds."
At odds, in dispute; at variance. "These squires at odds did fall." "He flashes into one gross crime or other, that sets us all at odds."
It is odds, it is probable; same as odds are, but no longer used. (Obs.)
odds are it is probable; as, odds are he will win the gold medal.
Odds and ends, that which is left; remnants; fragments; refuse; scraps; miscellaneous articles. "My brain is filled... with all kinds of odds and ends."
slim odds low odds; poor chances; as, there are slim odds he will win any medal.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Odds and ends" Quotes from Famous Books



... medicine-bag. The bag is made of the skin of an animal (such as the otter, wild cat, serpent, bear, raccoon, wolf, owl, weasel), of which it roughly preserves the shape. Each member of the society has one of these bags, in which he keeps the odds and ends that make up his "medicine" or charms. "They believe that from the miscellaneous contents in the belly of the skin bag or animal there issues a spirit or breath, which has the power, not only to knock down and kill a man, but also to set him up and restore him to life." ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... Multenius's window. He remembered now that he had often looked into it, without noticing the odd name above it. It was a window in which there were all sorts of curious things, behind a grille of iron bars, from diamonds and pearls to old ivory and odds and ends of bric-a-brac. A collector of curiosities would have found material in that window to delay him for half-an-hour—but Lauriston only gave one glance at it before hastening down a dark side- passage to a door, ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher

... sullenly on the bed. But inaction was not a characteristic of Minty's emotion; she presently rose again, and, taking an old work-box from her trunk, began to rummage in its recesses. It was an old shell-incrusted affair, and the apparent receptacle of such cheap odds and ends of jewelry as she possessed; a hideous cameo ring, the property of the late Mrs. Sharpe, was missing. She again rapidly explored the contents of the box, and then an inspiration seized her, and she darted ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... Lawyer Ball, West Lynne styled him. Not a young bachelor; midway, he may have been between forty and fifty. A short stout man, with a keen face and green eyes. He took up any practice that was brought to him—dirty odds and ends that Mr. Carlyle would not have touched with his toe—but, as that gentleman had remarked, he could be honest and true upon occasion, and there was no doubt that he would be so to Richard Hare. To his house, on Monday morning, early, so as to catch him before he went out, proceeded Mr. Carlyle. A ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... the recognition of the prince and the artificial ethnical formation of the principality would be pledges of security for France. But in 1813 Baden joined the coalition, and since then that nation created of odds and ends (de bric et de broc) and always handsomely treated by us, had not ceased to take a leading part in the struggles against our country. The grand-duke Frederick, grand-duke by the will of Napoleon, has done France all the harm he could. But French opinion itself ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various


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