on average
152
2.1
- idiom
:
en promedio
- On average, people spend about eight hours a day sleeping.
- on average, students
- on average, scores
- on average over time
Things get more complex over time on average, not, not less.
- Things get more complex over time on average, not, not less.
- The thing is, listen, men on average desire sex.
- How many hours a month on average do you think it is roughly?
- So you can sort of argue on average there's no real benefit for most people.
- And that feedback ends up making women, I think on average, better daters, right?
- Our donors actually, on average donated far less than my opponent.
- Men on average aren't as good with that.
- If you ask everyone that, yeah, you'll see on average differences between men and women.
Examples
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College students spend, on average, much less time studying than even the gloomiest of us had thought.
Academic text (1990) -
And it takes five adults on average to have two surviving chicks.
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So this would be an event that happens on average once per year.
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You know, Harry, on average, Married men live longer than single men.
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How many hours a month on average do you think it is roughly?
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The difference is that the winners on average handle problems better.
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On average, hundreds of people die every day.
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In this Shared Inquiry lesson, however, students took, on average, both more turns and longer turns than their teacher.
Academic text (2011) -
In real terms, wages in Egypt, on average, were about the same in 1993 as they were in 1973.
Academic text (1999) -
Did you know that, on average, 74 species a day become extinct?
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Most of the time
∞
1.0
Usually or in most cases
884
1.0
In the usual way that people expect
426
2.2
In the usual way for a person, thing, or group
186
1.0
In most cases
89
3.4
To say that something is true in most cases
78
3.0
In most situations
52
2.6
Happens most of the time
28
2.8
Usually in most cases
9
3.7
In most cases
The usual result appears when you look at many things together
Antonyms
How Typical
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'typically/usually' is directly derivable from combining 'on' (indicating reference/basis) with 'average' (the mean/typical value); thus the phrase means 'with respect to the average'. This is a common, regular prepositional+noun construction found across many languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily understand it.
Etymology
On average comes from the simple idea of the average, the number you get when you add several amounts and divide by how many there are. So when we say on average we mean 'typically' or 'usually' when we look at all cases together.