All bets are off

A sign reading 'the end is near.'
When we say the end is coming, we don’t mean for the world, even though we may say that.
What we mean is the end of our world as we know it.
(Photo: Brett Sayles/Pexels | Text: David/ArtisanEnglish.jp)

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Phrase: All bets are off

Have we reached the end of the world?

Probably not, but if we have, all bets are off.

Humans love predictability.

When we say the end is coming, we don’t mean for the world, even though we may say that.

What we mean is the end of our world as we know it.

When things can no longer be predicted with any degree of accuracy, English speakers will say all bets are off.

Predictability is nice and cozy. The opposite is chaos.

The pandemic has upset all of our lives, but the Americans are having a more challenging time than most.

With an election coming up on November 3rd, after what has occurred during the last two weeks, all bets are off.

First, Trump has coronavirus, and now he’s going crazy in the White House, demanding all of his political enemies be arrested.

Obama, Biden, Hillary, lock them all up!

That debate between Trump and Biden was something else.

Then we had the debate between candidates for the vice presidency, and that fly on Pence’s head!

I mean, who could have predicted that?

No, I do not think the end of the world is near.

I was pretty sure that Trump would win another term in office before the news that 13 men were arrested for planning to kidnap and assassinate Michigan’s governor.

Now, all bets are off.

Anything and everything is possible in the US for the next three months.

Predictability is a foreign concept for the foreseeable future.

For this reason, all bets are off.

Buckle up and pray for the Americans.

Somebody’s world is coming to an end, and it’s gonna be a rough ride.


Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test

This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 72.

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.


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