one or other VS one or the other
Below two sentences are quoted from respectively Oxford Dictionary and Collins Dictionary.
1. You must ask one or other of your parents.
2. One or other of the two women was wrong.

I wonder whether it would make a difference in terms of what the sentences mean, if we use "one or the other" instead of "one or other".

Meanwhile, there's this sentence from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
- One or the other of us will have to go.

Question

one or other VS one or the other
Below two sentences are quoted from respectively Oxford Dictionary and Collins Dictionary.
1. You must ask one or other of your parents.
2. One or other of the two women was wrong.

I wonder whether it would make a difference in terms of what the sentences mean,  if we use "one or the other" instead of "one or other".

Meanwhile, there's this sentence from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
- One or the other of us will have to go.

Answer

In the US, you would say “one or the other” if there were two possibilities, and could say “one or another” if there were more than two.

“One or other” is apparently British.

Answer

They have the exact same meaning.

As being from the US, I would use "one or the other." Perhaps "one or other" is more common in the UK, but, truthully, I don't know.

Hope that helps!

Answer

“On or other” is quite incomplete I don’t know where In the dictionary you found that but generally “one or the other” makes more sense and is more commonly used.

Answer

One or other would be the only grammatical choice for your examples in British English, in my opinion :)

Like British English, it appears there are cases where either usage applies in US English, according to the ngram viewer at Google.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=one+or+other%2Cone+or+the+other&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=28&smoothing=3#

It seems there are US usages of "one or other parent" too :

https://garydirenfeld.wordpress.com/2016/10/23/keeping-a-child-away-from-the-other-parent-can-backfire/

https://www.truity.com/blog/do-children-inherit-their-parents%E2%80%99-personalities

https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/combined-parent-figure

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=one+or+other+parent%2Cone+or+the+other+parent&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=28&smoothing=3

Answers · 8

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