par for the course
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
What is normally expected to happen
Literally: the expected standard
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
This has become almost par for the course in English qualifying campaigns under Robson: they were breached only once in reaching the last European Championship finals.
Yeah well par for the course par for the course.
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 “par for the course” mean?
What is normally expected to happen Literally: the expected standard
Is “par for the course” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.