the meaning of as good as any

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

Hello,

I have a question on the sentences below:

'‘How do you like your new house?’ ‘It’s as good as any. I don’t think I’m going to stay there long, anyway.’

I am not sure of the meaning of “as good as any”.
The meaning of it would be:

  1. It’s good like any other houses (the meaning of “good” implied)
  2. It’s just a house like any other houses (“good” is not implied; it is just used for comparison)
    What do you think? It is very hard to understand.

Thank you in advance,
sweetpumpkin

2

Personally, I would go with the following definition of it: “not an especially good time/place etc to do something, but not worse than any other” macmillandictionary.com/dic … etc-as-any

In your case, a house you can’t describe as having some extraordinary features, just one in a row of similar houses.

3

Hi, I think your #2 is pretty much correct. She is saying one house is as good as any other house, they are basically all the same. I agree it is tough to understand, because sometimes the focus is more on the “good” aspect - it depends on the context. Usually if the “any” is more clearly defined, that means that the “good” aspect is being stressed:

“This pizza is as good as any you’ll find in New York City.” - very good pizza
“My daughter is an excellent snowboarder; she’s as good as any of those competitors in the Olympic half-pipe.” - very good snowboarder

4

Thank you a lot for your attention, Eugene2114 and Luschen. Because of “good”, it was hard to understand.