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Reader question: Please explain this sentence, particularly against all odds: Against all odds, it looks like he is headed for a full recovery (from the leg injury). My comments: Against all odds means against all expectations. “He” broke his leg. After performing surgery on him, doctors said he would not be able to, say, walk properly again, let alone run and play like before. The doctors knew what they were talking about. They were speaking from experience, from the record books, taking into consideration all similar cases about leg injuries etc. and so forth. And yet, he appears to be making a full recovery, and that is to everyone’s surprise. That’s what it means to do something “against all odds” – achieving something when people don’t expect you to. Odd is anything unusual, i.e. something different from what is normal or expected. For instance, we say someone looks odd today. We mean to say that they’re wearing an odd-looking pair of trousers for instance, or acting strangely in general. We also talk of something as an “odd happening”, and that means something like that doesn’t usually happen. Snow in April for instance seldom happens here in Beijing. If it does, it’s an odd happening, an unusual occurrence. Oh, here’s a passage from Wuthering Heights, approaching the end of the book, which I read the other day (not for the first time): | 
