Street voices
Hugues
·
United States
"Tomato, tomato, or sometimes potato, potato. Something said in reply to an insignificant correction about something you or someone else said. Okay, so I just added the eggs to the flour and now I mix them, right? No, you whisk them. Oh, tomato, tomato."
What it means
A breezy way to brush off a tiny correction when the difference barely matters. You use it when two people are basically saying the same thing but one of them suddenly wants to act like the wording deserves a courtroom transcript. Playful, lightly dismissive, and perfect for those petty little nitpicks that are not worth the oxygen.
Usage examples
"I said mix, you said whisk. To may to, to mah to, dude, the eggs are still ending up in the same bowl tonight."
"You call it a couch and I call it a sofa, to-may-to to-mah-to, either way we are both asleep on it by nine."
Where it comes from
Lifted from the old song line where one singer says tomayto and the other tomahto, then shrugs the two off as one and the same. The phrase became the wave of the hand for differences too small to fight over.
Editors of this term
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