Ordinary people; unpretentious, down-to-earth individuals. This term has been around since about 1900. Zona Gale used it in Friendship Village (1908): “I see ’em all comin’ from the funeral . . . neighbors an’ friends an’ just folks.” See also man in the street.

Each to his or her own preference. This locution for the inexplicability of likes (and dislikes) began as “there is no disputing about tastes” in the sixteenth century. It was changed to “accounting for” by the early nineteenth century. Anthony Trollope, in the last of his Barset Chronicles (1867), said of Major Grantly as a suitor, “There was . . . no accounting for tastes.” A similar mid-twentieth-century phrase that is on its way to clichédom is different strokes for different folks, which originated in American regional slang. All these are synonymous with the much older proverb, One man’s meat is another’s poison, originating in Roman times and proverbial since about 1700. See also to each his own.