Expressions with All but, none but, but for etc

You might occasionally come across sentences like these:

• The party was all but over when we arrived.
• All but one of the plates were damaged

The expression all but has a couple of different uses, and from what I've seen on language forums, this can give even native speakers some problems, so in this post we'll look at this plus a couple of other expressions with but.

Random-ised thoughts - Tristram Shandy, -ize and -ise verbs

This is part of an investigation I've been doing into the use and spelling of -ize suffix verbs and their spelling (-ize or -ise) in British English. For more details, related posts and the methods I've used, see the -ize / -ise page.