6 Of One And Half-Dozen Of The Other ...

[chardon713]

Or as sometimes expressed - 6 to one, and half-dozen to another (which in terms of its meaning makes better grammatical sense).

So, does anyone know (a) which it is and (b) an authoritative source/origin

[waterboatman]

The former is the original. It means all is about equal.

[heathfield]

First recorded in 1836 in 'The Pirate', a novel by Captain Marryat. (From 'The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs' by Martin H. Manse).

[joko]

not sure how you can say saying 'to' instead of 'of' makes more sense given the meaning - the meaning is basically saying, doesn't matter what you want to call it, it amounts to the same thing - you both still have six items.

'to' makes no sense at all really