Word
whole
US/ˈhoʊɫ/
UK/hˈəʊl/
Definitions
01entire or complete
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.
Antonyms
02not broken or divided
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.”
03a complete thing
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.”
04entirely
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.”
Informal
Teaching tip
In formal writing, 'entirely' or 'completely' is usually preferred over this adverbial use of 'whole'.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Confusables
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.
Etymology
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.
Collocations
Word family
Related words
Idioms
go the whole hog — To do something as completely or entirely as possible; to hold back or reserve nothing.
have the whole bakery — To have large, callipygian buttocks; to be caked up.
smoke the whole pack — To be made to go all in on something one only wanted a lesser amount of.
the whole world and his dog — Everybody; too many people; a huge crowd.
whole ball of wax — The entire or overall plan, concept or action.
whole box of tricks — Everything and anything associated with a certain enterprise.
whole cloth — in full extent, wholesale, entirely, without changes or additions
whole enchilada — All of something or a group of related things taken in totality.
whole package — Something or someone that possesses a full set of relevant characteristics, usually desirable ones.
whole shebang — Everything; the entire thing.
Show all 11
whole shooting match — Everything; the entire collection, endeavor, or activity.
Domain
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/whole