What does "whole" mean?

1. (entire or complete) including every part of something; all of it. 2. (not broken or divided) in one piece and not broken or cut into parts. 3. (a complete thing) a complete thing made of many parts. 4. (entirely) completely or totally.

whole — meaning, definition & examples

Q: Is it correct to say "I spent the whole day to study."?

No — say "I spent the whole day studying.". When using 'whole day' with an activity, use the -ing form of the verb.

Word

01entire or complete

A2 · Elementary

adj. including every part of something; all of it.

adj. constituting the full amount, extent, or duration of something without exception.

“I was so hungry that I ate the whole pizza by myself.”

“The whole department was required to attend the safety briefing after the recent incident in the laboratory.”

Usage

Usually placed after a determiner like 'the', 'my', or 'this'.

Pitfall

I spent the whole day to study.

I spent the whole day studying.

When using 'whole day' with an activity, use the -ing form of the verb.

Synonyms

entire total complete

Antonyms

partial incomplete

02not broken or divided

B1 · Intermediate

adj. in one piece and not broken or cut into parts.

adj. undivided and in a single piece; not fragmented or processed into smaller units.

“The recipe says to add the whole cloves of garlic to the pan.”

“Archaeologists were surprised to find several whole jars among the ruins, as most pottery from that era is found in shards.”

Synonyms

intact unbroken

Antonyms

broken divided

03a complete thing

B2 · Upper Intermediate Countable noun

n. a complete thing made of many parts.

n. a thing that is complete in itself; an entity formed by combining various parts.

“The different departments must work together to benefit the company as a whole.”

“While each chapter is interesting on its own, the book must be judged as a whole to appreciate the author's message.”

Synonyms

entity unit entirety

Antonyms

part fraction segment

04entirely

B2 · Upper Intermediate Informal

adv. completely or totally.

adv. used as an intensifier to mean entirely or wholly.

“That is a whole different problem that we need to discuss later.”

“The project turned out to be a whole lot more expensive than the original estimates suggested.”

Teaching tip

In formal writing, 'entirely' or 'completely' is usually preferred over this adverbial use of 'whole'.

Synonyms

completely totally

Antonyms

partially

Common phrases and expressions where native English speakers use the word “whole” in context.

01. whole thing 02. whole community 03. whole life 04. whole new 05. whole story 06. whole world 07. whole body 08. whole system

whole vs all

All focuses on the total number of individual items, while whole focuses on the entirety of a single unit.

RememberAll for plural; whole for singular.

From Middle English whol, hol, hole (“healthy, unhurt, whole”), from Old English hāl (“healthy, safe”), from Proto-West Germanic hail, from Proto-Germanic hailaz (“whole, safe, sound”), from Proto-Indo-European *kéh₂ilos (“healthy, whole”). The spelling with wh-, attested since ca. 1400, represents an excrescent /w/, which developed in words with initial /(h)ɔː/, /(h)oː/ in southwestern dialects of Middle English. While this pronunciation did not establish itself in the standard language (except in one), the spelling survived in whole and whore, in the former case likely reinforced by a desire to disambiguate from hole. Cognates Compare West Frisian hiel, Low German heel/heil, Dutch heel, German heil, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål hel, Norwegian Nynorsk heil; also Welsh coel (“omen”), Breton kel (“omen, mention”), Old Prussian kails (“healthy”), Old Church Slavonic цѣлъ (cělŭ, “healthy, unhurt”). Related to hale, health, hail, hallow, heal, and holy.

Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

NOUN

whole(A2)

ADJECTIVE

ADVERB

as a whole healthy holiday number