whole

CEFRA1

/həʊl/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    adjective

    Complete, with all parts included.

  2. 02

    adjective

    Extra detail

    Entire, undivided., Used as an intensifier.

Examples

  • It almost scared me not to see you online for a whole day.

  • The scheme would cover the whole of the UK.

At a glance

Sits at A1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Also pronounced

  • [hɜʊ̯ɫ]
  • [hoʊ̯ɫ]

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

  1. Sound, uninjured, healthy.

  2. Entire, undivided.

  3. Used as an intensifier.

More examples

In context

  • The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

  • He is of whole mind, but the same cannot be said about his physical state.

  • I brought a whole lot of balloons for the party. She ate a whole bunch of french fries.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

After dinner, she ate the blank chocolate cake by herself without sharing.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

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,...