whole
From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Middle English 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-, introduced in the 15th century, was for disambiguation with hole, and was absent in Scots.
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.
Pronunciation
Adjective
whole (comparative wholer or more whole, superlative wholest or most whole)
- Entire, undivided.
- Synonyms: total; see also Thesaurus:entire
- I ate a whole fish.
- 1661, John Fell, The Life of the most learned, reverend and pious Dr. H. Hammond:
- During the whole time of his abode in the university he generally spent thirteen hours of the day in study; by which assiduity besides an exact dispatch of the whole course of philosophy, he read over in a manner all classic authors that are extant […]
- 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 16:
- Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging. […] He walked the whole way, walking through crowds, and under the noses of dray-horses, carriage-horses, and cart-horses, without taking the least notice of them.
- 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVI, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
- “ […] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness. But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”
- 2013 June 29, “High and wet”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 28:
- Floods in northern India, mostly in the small state of Uttarakhand, have wrought disaster on an enormous scale. The early, intense onset of the monsoon on June 14th swelled rivers, washing away roads, bridges, hotels and even whole villages.
- Used as an intensifier.
- I brought a whole lot of balloons for the party. She ate a whole bunch of french fries.
- 2016, Rae Carson, Like a River Glorious, HarperCollins, →ISBN:
- There, a huge blue heron stands sentry like a statue, eye on the surface, waiting for his next meal to wriggle by. A lone grassy hill overlooks it all, well above the flood line, big enough to pitch a whole mess of tents [on].
- 2011, Keith Maillard, Looking Good: Difficulty at the Beginning, Brindle and Glass, →ISBN:
- I'm thinking, thanks a whole fuck of a lot, Robert. You could have laid that on me weeks ago.
- Sound, uninjured, healthy.
- Synonyms: hale, well; see also Thesaurus:healthy
- He is of whole mind, but the same cannot be said about his physical state.
- 1939, Alfred Edward Housman, Additional Poems, X, lines 5-6:
- Here, with one balm for many fevers found, / Whole of an ancient evil, I sleep sound.
- (of food) From which none of its constituents has been removed.
- whole wheat; whole milk
- (mining) As yet unworked.
Translations
entire
|
food with no constituents removed
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Adverb
whole (comparative more whole, superlative most whole)
- (colloquial) In entirety; entirely; wholly.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:completely
- I ate a fish whole!
- That’s a whole other story.
Translations
colloquial: in entirety
|
Noun
whole (plural wholes)
- Something complete, without any parts missing.
- Synonyms: entireness, totality; see also Thesaurus:entirety
- Meronym: part
- This variety of fascinating details didn't fall together into an enjoyable, coherent whole.
- An entirety.
Derived terms
- 20 whole dollars
- an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind
- as a whole
- a whole 'nother
- a whole nother
- committee of the whole
- double whole
- double whole note
- go the whole hog
- go the whole pile
- go whole hog
- have one's whole life ahead of one
- heart-whole
- make whole
- mean the whole world to
- on the whole
- out of whole cloth
- part-whole bias
- part-whole model
- put one's whole pussy into
- quadruple whole
- quadruple whole note
- the whole bang shoot
- the whole caboodle
- the whole nine yards
- the whole shop
- the whole while
- the whole world
- the whole world and his dog
- twenty whole dollars
- unwholesome
- upon the whole
- upon the whole matter
- whole-ass
- whole bag of tricks
- whole ball of wax
- whole blood
- whole-blood coagulation time
- whole boiling
- whole box of tricks
- whole chebang
- whole child
- whole cloth
- whole enchilada
- whole food
- whole-footed
- whole gale
- whole-genome duplication
- whole gip
- whole-gip
- whole-grain
- whole grain
- whole-gyp
- whole gyp
- whole-handedly
- whole-heartedly
- whole-heartedness
- whole-hearted, wholehearted
- whole hog
- whole kit and caboodle
- whole kit and kaboodle
- whole language
- whole-length
- whole-life
- whole life order
- whole-life order
- whole life tariff
- wholemeal
- whole milk
- whole note
- whole number
- whole package
- whole plate
- whole rest
- wholesale
- wholesaler
- whole shebang
- whole shitting match
- whole shooting match
- whole-skinned
- whole smash
- whole snipe
- wholesome
- whole-souled
- whole step
- whole-time
- whole tone
- whole-tone scale
- whole undern
- whole-wheat, wholewheat
- whole wide world
- with whole skin
Translations
something complete
|
References
- “whole”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
Further reading
- All and whole — Linguapress online English grammar
Anagrams
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