nine times out of ten
6
2.0
- idiom
- Informal
:
nueve de cada diez veces
- Or you can follow the money, which, nine times out of ten, will get you closer to the truth.
- nine times out of ten, you know
- nine times out of ten, she gets
- nine times out of ten, they go
Examples
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Women who are interested in me know exactly who I am and what they want and nine times out of ten they get it.
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Look, I get that you're worried, but I've seen a lot of these cases, and nine times out of ten, the girl's just with a boyfriend.
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In fact, nine times out of ten, the real problem is simply finding a product or service.
Blog text (34) -
If you ask people what they want most in life, nine times out of ten you will find the answer to be: happiness.
Blog text (16) -
The candidate who spent more money won nine times out of ten in the House of Representatives; eight times out of ten in the Senate.
Academic text (1998) -
Nine times out of ten, my answer causes them to run for the hills.
Blog text (27) -
Nine times out of ten, the results of an election are released before the mail-in votes are counted.
Blog text (7) -
Nine times out of ten, there's a human perpetrator.
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Somehow I'm guessing nine times out of ten, it isn't so simple—and it's probably pretty darn scary.
Blog text (29) -
If you give a boy a challenge, nine times out of ten he will rise to it.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Happens many times
476
1.0
Happening many times in a short time
98
4.9
Happens many times, usually within a short time
73
1.8
Very often on many occasions
47
1.8
Happens again and again
12
9.9
On many occasions
Antonyms
How Often
Surface Forms
Morphology
The expression is a transparent numerical proportion: 'nine' and 'ten' combined with 'times out of' directly denote frequency (9 occurrences out of 10 = most of the time). This proportional construction is cross-linguistically common (e.g. Spanish 'nueve de cada diez'), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Nine times out of ten comes from the simple image of counting: imagine doing something ten times and it works on nine of them and not on one. So people say nine times out of ten to mean 'very often' or 'in almost every case'.