OR SO

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does or so mean? 

• OR SO (adverb)
  The adverb OR SO has 1 sense:

1. (of quantities) imprecise but fairly close to correct

  Familiarity information: OR SO used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• OR SO (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(of quantities) imprecise but fairly close to correct

Synonyms:

about; approximately; around; close to; just about; more or less; or so; roughly; some

Context example:

20 or so people were at the party

 Context examples 

That's enough to build up thin but detectable ice deposits over 100,000 years or so.

(Dawn Maps Ceres Craters Where Ice Can Accumulate, NASA)

A moon may have existed at that location within the past hundred million years or so and was destroyed, perhaps by a giant impact.

(At Saturn, One of These Rings is not like the Others, NASA)

When I returned, Mr. Wickfield had come home, from a garden he had, a couple of miles or so out of town, where he now employed himself almost every day.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Even Earth's atmosphere leaks. (Don't worry, it will stick around for another billion years or so.)

(The ice giant Uranus appears to be losing a bit of its atmosphere to space, NASA)

A particular type of FEMUR HEAD NECROSIS occurring in children, mainly male, with a course of four years or so.

(Perthes Disease, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

Meanwhile the schooner gradually fell off and filled again upon another tack, sailed swiftly for a minute or so, and brought up once more dead in the wind's eye.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

As I entered, the church was between me and the seat, and for a minute or so I lost sight of her.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Long, long ago, some two thousand years or so, there lived a rich man with a good and beautiful wife.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

She did not hear the study door close, but a minute or so later there was a dreadful cry in the room below.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

‘If you walk on a mile or so to Clapham Junction,’ said he, ‘you’ll just be in time for the last to Victoria.’

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)