"in the main" meaning in English

See in the main in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Prepositional phrase

Head templates: {{head|en|prepositional phrase}} in the main
  1. Principally; on the whole; for the most part. Synonyms: all in all, mainly, mostly, usually, for the main
    Sense id: en-in_the_main-en-prep_phrase-3Y-qdH6p Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for in the main meaning in English (1.6kB)

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  "head_templates": [
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1869 August, Charles Dickens, “On Mr. Fechter's Acting”, in The Atlantic Monthly",
          "text": "Mr. Fechter has been in the main more accustomed to speak French than to speak English.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 February 28, John Cloud, “Sex Addiction: A Disease or a Convenient Excuse?”, in Time, retrieved 2013-08-13",
          "text": "Bill Clinton's philandering was regarded as a moral failing or a joke — but not, in the main, as an illness.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2023 November 15, Christian Wolmar, “Ministers should carry the can for ticket office fiasco”, in RAIL, number 996, page 47",
          "text": "Now, I hold no candle for the train operators, and I think that in the main they have been far too craven about any government proposals. But in this instance, they have been badly traduced, led up the hill, and then chucked back down it.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Principally; on the whole; for the most part."
      ],
      "id": "en-in_the_main-en-prep_phrase-3Y-qdH6p",
      "links": [
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          "Principally",
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          "on the whole",
          "on the whole"
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          "for the most part"
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      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "all in all"
        },
        {
          "word": "mainly"
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          "word": "mostly"
        },
        {
          "word": "usually"
        },
        {
          "word": "for the main"
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  "word": "in the main"
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  "head_templates": [
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          "ref": "1869 August, Charles Dickens, “On Mr. Fechter's Acting”, in The Atlantic Monthly",
          "text": "Mr. Fechter has been in the main more accustomed to speak French than to speak English.",
          "type": "quotation"
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          "ref": "2011 February 28, John Cloud, “Sex Addiction: A Disease or a Convenient Excuse?”, in Time, retrieved 2013-08-13",
          "text": "Bill Clinton's philandering was regarded as a moral failing or a joke — but not, in the main, as an illness.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 November 15, Christian Wolmar, “Ministers should carry the can for ticket office fiasco”, in RAIL, number 996, page 47",
          "text": "Now, I hold no candle for the train operators, and I think that in the main they have been far too craven about any government proposals. But in this instance, they have been badly traduced, led up the hill, and then chucked back down it.",
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        "Principally; on the whole; for the most part."
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "all in all"
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    {
      "word": "mainly"
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      "word": "mostly"
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    {
      "word": "for the main"
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  "word": "in the main"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). 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.