英和和英

語源

Deverbal from toss up.

発音

名詞

toss-up (plural toss-ups)

1. (idiomatic) A decision in which neither choice is clearly favorable or unfavorable, or for which the outcome does not matter.

   It's really a toss-up between the red skirt with blue stripes and the blue skirt with red stripes. They both look good and fit well.

   • 1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London:

     But at the moment when everything was going so well, there came one of those unforeseeable chances that reduce even the most circumspectly arranged plots to the significance of a mere toss-up.

2. Either of two outcomes that are equally likely.
   • 1889, Rudyard Kipling, “Only A Subaltern”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 151:

     “He’ll do,” said the Doctor, quietly. “It must have been a toss-up all through the night. ’Think you’re to be congratulated on this case.”

   • 2013 January 11, Tom Shone, The Guardian‎:

     No longer is the best picture going to be a toss-up between that troika of national-historical heavies: Argo, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty. Instead, a warm welcome back for Life of Pi, widely dismissed by many as "this year's Hugo" but this column's dark-horse pick from October.

3. The toss of a coin used to decide some issue.
4. A toss-up question.

派生語

アナグラム

• spouts, stoups, uptoss