Find the word definition

Crossword clues for odds and ends

odds and ends
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
odds and ends
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ We packed just about everything, but probably left some odds and ends behind.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Cheerful little odds and ends arranged with flair can often make a room seem far more interesting than much grander collections.
▪ He felt heavy, saturated, crammed with more or less repulsive odds and ends he neither wanted nor needed to know.
▪ It was a cupboard used by the cleaners that contained a number of other odds and ends.
▪ It was only three minutes down the road, and Jim always had a storehouse of odds and ends.
▪ The orange conning tower sits abandoned on the dock amid odds and ends of superstructure.
▪ Unlike him I have always found the little odds and ends Sellotaped to the front cover both interesting and useful.
▪ Wycliffe had a little room where he kept his books and papers, his photographs and odds and ends he valued.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Odds and ends

Odds \Odds\ ([o^]dz), n. sing. & pl. [See Odd, a.]

  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 ``Pre["e]minent by so much odds.''
    --Milton. ``The fearful odds of that unequal fray.''
    --Trench.

    The odds Is that we scarce are men and you are gods.
    --Shak.

    There appeared, at least, four to one odds against them.
    --Swift.

    All the odds between them has been the different scope . . . given to their understandings to range in.
    --Locke.

    Judging is balancing an account and determining on which side the odds lie.
    --Locke.

  2. Quarrel; dispute; debate; strife; -- chiefly in the phrase at odds.

    Set them into confounding odds.
    --Shak.

    I can not speak Any beginning to this peevish odds.
    --Shak.

    At odds, in dispute; at variance. ``These squires at odds did fall.''
    --Spenser. ``He flashes into one gross crime or other, that sets us all at odds.''
    --Shak.

    It is odds, it is probable; same as odds are, but no longer used. [Obs.]
    --Jer. Taylor.

    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.''
    --W. Irving.

    slim odds low odds; poor chances; as, there are slim odds he will win any medal.

Wiktionary
odds and ends

n. (context idiomatic English) miscellaneous things.

WordNet
odds and ends

n. a motley assortment of things [syn: oddments, melange, farrago, ragbag, hodgepodge, mishmash, mingle-mangle, hotchpotch, omnium-gatherum]

Usage examples of "odds and ends".

You're not the first to come out with a little cloth sack of odds and ends.

I had a poshteen in my valise, and had gathered a few odds and ends since coming to Lahore - Persian boots, pyjamys and sash for lounging on the hotter days, and the like.

There were some personal odds and ends she would have liked to take with her, but she could send for them from Manon.

You wouldn't think somebody in this day and age could have bought clothes, jewelry, accessories, and a purse full of odds and ends, without leaving any traces in the vendors' computer systems, or buying anything that would give away her origins.

She furnished him some little odds and ends of employment, which he got through with after a fair fashion and with some credit.

Even I have never seen it, and you only get the odds and ends you need to know.

Pham remembered the name from the list of odds and ends the Skroderiders had scrounged up.

That unknown Gypsy had settled instead at one of those camping grounds, and had built not only living quarters for himself and his family, but a bathhouse, a laundry, and a trading post, and had begun selling odds and ends to the others who came to camp.

It was one of two, being the larger, and now contained only a few odds and ends of little importance.

Which herbs were better than others for headaches, fragments of old stories, odds and ends like that.

He clamped an antigrav handler onto one of the generators and moved it to the waiting sled--thank goodness both items were standard equipment for a cargo shuttle, and that he'd chosen to leave them in place on the Collins when he'd loaded the extra space with odds and ends that might come in handy on this assignment.

However in his panic to get clear of retribution he'd left enough odds and ends of only partly destroyed information to be useful.

He held on to his airline hold-all with its tin of Greek olive oil, its towel, its crumpled postcards of Santorini and its other odds and ends.