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Pongy Posted 19 years ago
Grammar

"Anything but good" and "All but good"

Hi again, I always get confused about the phrases like "Anything but good" and "All but good".. From what I know "Anything but good" means anything that is not good, but I'm not sure about "All but good".. does it actually mean the same thing? I have a number of friends who tell me different meaning.. and I'm really confused. Thanks in advance.
  

Top answer

Hi Pongy, Welcome to the forums. Can you give a couple examples of how you have seen "all but good" used? " In other words, may possible things, none of them good.

— BarbaraPA

  • Hi Pongy, Welcome to the forums.
  • Can you give a couple examples of how you have seen "all but good" used?
  • " In other words, may possible things, none of them good.
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4 Answers
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Hi Pongy,

Welcome to the forums. Can you give a couple examples of how you have seen "all but good" used?

For the "anything but good" I can think of examples like "I don't know how this will end, but I suspect it will be anything but good." In other words, may possible things, none of them good.
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Hi, actually the phrase that I once came across somewhere was "The game that appears to be all but lost" so in this case the concerning phrase is "all but lost". I'm not sure whether it means that the particular game is leaning towards losing or winning. If my memory doesn't fail me I also remember seeing similar sentences with "all but [word]".. so I'm quite curious on the meaning of this phrase
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Oh, okay - "the game is all but lost" means that it's not over yet, but a loss is almost certain.
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Meaning all except good, I.e is anything but good, that is, no good
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