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I grew up in the Northeastern US where the use of the phrase "all set" to mean "ready" or "finished" is common.

An example would be, "Are you all set with that?" (perhaps while pointing to an unfinished meal)

Another example would be, "Are we all set?" (as in "Are we ready to go?")

I never gave it a second thought until a friend from California told me that the usage of "all set" really threw him off when he moved to the Northeast. He had never heard that usage before ... hence my curiosity.

Is the use of "all set" exclusive to certain regions in the US? Is it used at all in Great Britain?

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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Nope, it's not used in the UK. I've never heard it in California either.

What I find confusing about the use of the term is that in the US Northeast no-one seems to understand any of the ways I would normally express the same concept.

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What are the ways you would express the same concept? – gbutters Apr 17 '11 at 18:47
Curious. I grew up in Colorado, and I'm familiar with this expression and use it myself. Perhaps there's a dialectal line somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, west of which people no longer use the idiom. Or perhaps I'm just weird. – JSBձոգչ Apr 17 '11 at 18:50
"I'm good", "I'm done", "I'm fine" would probably be the most usual way. – Marcin Apr 17 '11 at 19:18
I've heard this widely used in London, and frequently use the phrase myself. Perhaps it isn't used in your part of the UK? We use it mostly to indicate that everyone is ready, or more commonly to ask if everyone is ready ("All set?"), so "I'm done" wouldn't carry quite the same connotations. – Lunivore Apr 18 '11 at 16:07
@Lunivore: I live in London. As noted below in my comment to Ankur Bannerjee, it's actually quite a different usage. I almost never hear anyone say it. – Marcin Apr 18 '11 at 16:28
up vote 1 down vote

Yes it is used in the UK. As an example, the headline to this story (first one that came up in Google)Phil Taylor all set for Wales showdown.

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That's a rather different usage - it means that someone is ready for an event. It is never (as far as we can say that about dialects) used in the UK to mean that something is completed, or finished-with. – Marcin Apr 17 '11 at 19:19
@Marcin But @gbutters did include "ready" as one of the meanings in a particular context, so I'd say yes the UK usage quoted it valid. – Ankur Banerjee Apr 17 '11 at 20:04
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@Ankur Bannerjee: It is a different sense of "ready", and in England it is only used transitively; by contrast in the US it is used much less in this transitive sense than it is in England. In the US it is generally used as an absolute. – Marcin Apr 17 '11 at 20:09
up vote 0 down vote

Both the NOAD and the OED reports that set, as adjective, can mean "ready, prepared, or likely to do something."

“All set for tonight?” he asked.
Water costs look set to increase.

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