one of those things
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
An event or situation that is unfortunate but unavoidable
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Một sự kiện hoặc tình huống không may nhưng không thể tránh
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
A single death should always be regarded as possible cause for concern, but unless further cases occur you can regard it as just one of those things.
Peter Carberry, chairman of Hummersknott's governors, said: ‘ I am very annoyed but it is just one of those things.’
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “one of those things” mean?
An event or situation that is unfortunate but unavoidable
Is “one of those things” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.