Sentence: He does so more often than not!

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hello All,

I would be most grateful if you help me get the meaning of the following sentence:

He does so more often than not!!!

Thanks in advance,
Mohammad

2

I think you should give the context in which the sentence is.

3

You don’t need the context to understand the gist.
more often than not is an adverb and means in more than half the instances

4

Hello tortoisea and lost_soul,

OK, the phrase “more often than not” is an idiom. The fact is that one of my friends ask me about the meaning of the mentioned sentence in this way:

He does so more, often than not instead of He does so more often than not.

I ask it immediately and didn’t check my dictionary beforehanded. :oops:

Thanks a million,
Mohammad

5

Hi m1mohammad

Just one more comment:

The word ‘so’ in your sentence refers back to some activity that was mentioned in a previous sentence (in the previous context), so basically your sentence means:

He does it [size=92](the activity that was previously mentioned)[/size] more often than he does not do it.
.

6

Hi Yankee,

EXACTLY.