"be-all" meaning in English

See be-all in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: be-alls [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} be-all (plural be-alls)
  1. (poetic) The whole; all that is to be. Tags: poetic Derived forms: be-all and end-all, end-all and be-all
    Sense id: en-be-all-en-noun-5qpahh1s Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for be-all meaning in English (1.2kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "be-alls",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "be-all (plural be-alls)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "derived": [
        {
          "word": "be-all and end-all"
        },
        {
          "word": "end-all and be-all"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "a. 1606, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 1, scene 7, lines 4–5",
          "text": "That but this blow / Might be the be-all and the end-all!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, Be In It to Win It",
          "text": "[…] to be happy with their lot in life, content with things as they are, things that may once have been be-alls and absolute end-alls but that lost their intoxication after five years, put them on automatic pilot after ten and became a prison after fifteen.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The whole; all that is to be."
      ],
      "id": "en-be-all-en-noun-5qpahh1s",
      "links": [
        [
          "poetic",
          "poetic"
        ],
        [
          "whole",
          "whole"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(poetic) The whole; all that is to be."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "poetic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "be-all"
}
{
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "be-all and end-all"
    },
    {
      "word": "end-all and be-all"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "be-alls",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "be-all (plural be-alls)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English poetic terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "a. 1606, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 1, scene 7, lines 4–5",
          "text": "That but this blow / Might be the be-all and the end-all!",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007, Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, Be In It to Win It",
          "text": "[…] to be happy with their lot in life, content with things as they are, things that may once have been be-alls and absolute end-alls but that lost their intoxication after five years, put them on automatic pilot after ten and became a prison after fifteen.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The whole; all that is to be."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "poetic",
          "poetic"
        ],
        [
          "whole",
          "whole"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(poetic) The whole; all that is to be."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "poetic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "be-all"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-24 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (82c8ff9 and f4967a5). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.