grammatical expression: to be a toss-up between…

https://i0.wp.com/activerain.com/image_store/uploads/2/0/1/8/4/ar122937037548102.jpg

The grammatical expression for today is to be “a toss-up between” two options. English native speakers use this when we can’t make a choice between two things, people or places. For example:

A: What’s your favorite food?

B: It’s a toss-up between sushi and lasagna. I love them both!

_________________________________________________________________

A: What’s the best country you’ve ever been to?

B: It’s a toss-up between Italy and Turkey. They were both so interesting. I can’t choose between them.

_________________________________________________________________

A: Who do you think was the world’s most evil dictator?

B: Many people think Hitler was the worst but for me, it’s a toss-up between Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. Both of them were far worse than Hitler.

My wife and I are trying to decide where to go on our next vacation, but we haven’t made a final decision yet. Right now, it’s a toss-up between France and Spain.

I believe this expression comes from the habit Western people have of tossing a coin in order to make a choice between two things. If the coin is “heads” (the front side), we choose the first option; if the coin is “tails” (the back side), we choose the second option. So, in these cases, it’s like we’re saying I have to toss a coin in order to choose between them because they’re both equal in my opinion.

Advertisement

2 Comments »

  1. Where I wanna go some day is a toss-up between Italy and France.
    this can be used?

    • Hi there.

      This can be used but I would slightly change it to make it sound more natural. I would say, “The place where I’d most like to go is a toss-up between Italy and Spain.”

      Thanks for your question!

      Mike


{ RSS feed for comments on this post} · { TrackBack URI }

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: