I’m wondering if “figure on” is used exclusively (or commonly, for that matter) in the US? Thank you very much.
Man: I never figured on you coming to rescue me…
It certainly sounds American rather than British to me.
But you could ask http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.co.uk/.
For what it’s worth, this is not a common expression in Canada. You would be understood, but you would also sound a bit odd.
Britons would know what you meant, and for all I know used it themselves in the 17th century, like those quaint Americanisms ‘Fall’ for autumn, and ‘gotten’, well-known as instances.
We wouldn’t use it now, and would reckon it as something a stereotypical prospector or Hoosier cracker-barrel philosopher would say, like “By Cracky.” and “Consarn it !”:
“Well, I figure on gitting to the shack by dark; I’ll have m’ vittles then.”
I guess this place is the epitome of cracker-barrel philosophy…
If you’re looking for a British equivalent, you could try something like “reckon” or “count”, though in the negative (“I hadn’t expected”), it would more likely be “I hadn’t reckoned on that…”, whereas in the positive sense, it would more likely be “I’d counted on…” (=reasonably certain it would happen - I think to use “reckoned on” in that sense implies a bit more of a gamble).
The Oxford English Dictionary notes the usage, but marks it as an Americanism.
I am not an AmE speaker, but FWIW I understand the phrase as meaning slightly more than “expect”. It might be closer in sense to “anticipate”; it implies that the speaker does not merely foresee an event, but that he places some reliance on it. “I figured he would get to Anchorage by nightfall” just indicates a prediction or calculation, but “I figured on him getting to Anchorage by nightfall” suggests that the speaker did something, or refrained from doing something, in the expectation that this would happen.
I hadn’t expected there to be a crucial nuance like this. Thank you.
I’ve heard it a lot from people from the Canadian prairies and BC, rural BC now that I think of it, and not from anyone under say 45. And often with a sense that involves figures, e.g. “You can figure on getting 25 mpg with this car.”
Data point? Michigander here, and it might sound strange if I heard it. I would never say it. I might “figure about” or “count on,” but never “figure on.”
Other than “figure out” I would only use “figure (v.)” with numbers. Of course there are lots of noun uses.
I’m in the U.S. and I’ll say “figure out” sometimes and maybe I’ve heard “figure on” a time or two but it just sounds bad and jarring to my ears, grammatically incorrect or unnatural, to me it just doesn’t roll off the tongue in a natural way.