different strokes (for different folks)
Different people will like or do different things. My mom loves cooking, but I hate being in the kitchen—different strokes for different folks, I guess. A: "Baseball is so boring, though." B: "So don't come with me then. It's OK—different strokes." I could never sit on the beach all day like Aunt Joan, but different strokes for different folks, I guess."
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
Different strokes for different folks.
Prov. Different people like different things.; Different people live in different ways. My neighbor spends all his free time working in his garden. I would never want to do that, but different strokes for different folks.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
different strokes for different folks
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
different strokes for different folks
You say different strokes for different folks to mean that people are all different and have different needs and desires. The federal government has, by tradition, been respectful of local standards in local communities — different strokes for different folks, as they say.
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012
different strokes for different folks
different things please or are effective with different people. proverb This chiefly US expression was used as a slogan in the early 1970s in a Texan drug abuse project.
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017
different strokes for different folks
phr. different things please different people. Do whatever you like. Different strokes for different folks.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
no accounting for tastes, there is no
Each to his or her own preference. This locution for the inexplicability of likes (and dislikes) began as “there is no disputing about tastes” in the sixteenth century. It was changed to “accounting for” by the early nineteenth century. Anthony Trollope, in the last of his
Barset Chronicles (1867), said of Major Grantly as a suitor, “There was . . . no accounting for tastes.” A similar mid-twentieth-century phrase that is on its way to clichédom is
different strokes for different folks, which originated in American regional slang. All these are synonymous with the much older proverb,
One man’s meat is another’s poison, originating in Roman times and proverbial since about 1700. See also
to each his own.
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer