odd [ME] The first meaning of odd, an Old Norse word, was ‘having one left when divided by two’, as in ‘odd numbers’. This led to ‘single, solitary’, and then ‘strange, unusual’. In the betting sense odds have been around since the beginning of the 16th century. If you lay odds or give odds you are offering a bet with odds favourable to the other person betting. The opposite is to take odds, where you offer a bet with odds unfavourable to the other person betting. A person who talks loudly and opinionatedly is sometimes said to be shouting the odds—the idea here is of someone calling out the odds on a racecourse, encouraging punters to bet. When we say of something that it makes no odds [M17th] we mean that it will not alter things in any way. This is not the gambling sense of odds, but an old use of the word with the sense ‘difference in advantage or effect’.