Idiom
odds and ends
Meaning
Miscellaneous things; oddments
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I keep my odds and ends in a kitchen drawer.”
“You can find some useful odds and ends at the local flea market.”
“He puts all his small odds and ends into a plastic box.”
“Before moving, she spent the weekend sorting through odds and ends she had collected over the years.”
“The mechanic spent the afternoon looking for a few odds and ends to finish repairing the old truck.”
“We still have some odds and ends to finish before the new office is ready for the team.”
“The tailor used various odds and ends of colorful fabric to create a unique pattern on the back of the jacket.”
“The attic was filled with nothing but forgotten odds and ends — faded postcards, broken clocks, and keys to doors that no longer existed.”
Examples
simple
“I keep my odds and ends in a kitchen drawer.”
“You can find some useful odds and ends at the local flea market.”
“He puts all his small odds and ends into a plastic box.”
contextual
“Before moving, she spent the weekend sorting through odds and ends she had collected over the years.”
“The mechanic spent the afternoon looking for a few odds and ends to finish repairing the old truck.”
“We still have some odds and ends to finish before the new office is ready for the team.”
“The tailor used various odds and ends of colorful fabric to create a unique pattern on the back of the jacket.”
complex
“The attic was filled with nothing but forgotten odds and ends — faded postcards, broken clocks, and keys to doors that no longer existed.”
Origin
From a dialectal corruption of the earlier phrase *ords and ends*, meaning points and endings or beginnings and ends. The term preserves the obsolete *ord*, from Old English *ord*, denoting a point, beginning, or the foremost part of a weapon. The current form emerged as the initial vowel shifted, leaving the original sense of start and finish to signify various remnants.
Key words
Related idioms
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