make all the difference

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

make all the difference (third-person singular simple present makes all the difference, present participle making all the difference, simple past and past participle made all the difference)

1. (idiomatic) To be a crucial or deciding factor; to have a very significant effect (often a positive one).
   • 1626, Robert Bolton, Some Generall Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God‎^[1], London: Edmund Weaver, page 17:

     We are all framed of the same mold, hewed out of the same Rocke, made as it were, of the same cloth, the sheares, as they say, onely going betweene; it is therefore onely the free loue and grace of God, which makes all the difference.

   • 1734, Alexander Forbes, Essays Moral and Philosophical, London: J. Osborn & T. Longman, Part I, Chapter 12, p. 100,^[2]

     To assert the Superiority of the Human Spirit […] above that of other Animals upon this earth, has been the endeavour of many Persons, who […] have made their System more coherent than those who have endeavour’d to put Men and Beasts upon a level. Some of this last Party indeed acknowledge the advantage that Mankind have from the Frame of the Body and its Organs, which they pretend makes all the difference.

   • 1814 July, [Jane Austen], chapter XVIII, in Mansfield Park: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC:

     How am I ever to look him in the face and say such things? Could you do it? But then he is your cousin, which makes all the difference.

   • 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC:

     They knew that life nowadays was harsh and bare, that they were often hungry and often cold, and that they were usually working when they were not asleep. But doubtless it had been worse in the old days. They were glad to believe so. Besides, in those days they had been slaves and now they were free, and that made all the difference, as Squealer did not fail to point out.

   • 2013 February 22, Alison Flood, “Diagram prize shortlist points the way to this year’s oddest book titles”, in The Guardian:

     Publishers and booksellers know only too well that a title can make all the difference to the sales of a book […]

See also

• make all the difference in the world
• make a difference
• make no difference