"wholly" meaning in English

See wholly in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Adverb

IPA: /ˈhəʊ.li/ [Received-Pronunciation], [ˈhəʊ.lɪ] [Received-Pronunciation], /ˈhəʊl.li/ [Received-Pronunciation], [ˈhɒʊɫ.lɪ] [Received-Pronunciation], /ˈhoʊ.li/ [US], [ˈhoʊ.li] [US], /ˈhoʊl.li/ [US], [ˈhoʊɫ.li] [US] Audio: en-us-wholly.ogg
Rhymes: -əʊli, -əʊlli Etymology: From Middle English holly, holeliche, holliche (also as halely, hallich, etc.), equivalent to whole + -ly. Doublet of holy. Etymology templates: {{inh|en|enm|holly}} Middle English holly, {{affix|en|whole|-ly}} whole + -ly Head templates: {{en-adv|-}} wholly (not comparable)
  1. Completely and entirely; to the fullest extent; (loosely, exaggeratedly) very; to a great extent. Tags: not-comparable Synonyms (to the fullest extent): completely
    Sense id: en-wholly-en-adv-UdwX-JHT Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English positive polarity items, English terms suffixed with -ly, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 100 0 Disambiguation of English positive polarity items: 100 0 Disambiguation of English terms suffixed with -ly: 100 0 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 100 0 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 100 0 Disambiguation of 'to the fullest extent': 100 0
  2. Exclusively and solely. Tags: not-comparable Synonyms (exclusively): entirely
    Sense id: en-wholly-en-adv-FGy6NghI Disambiguation of 'exclusively': 0 100
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: totally, completely, solely, wholely, wholy [obsolete]

Alternative forms

{
  "antonyms": [
    {
      "sense": "antonym(s) of “completely”",
      "word": "partly"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "enm",
        "3": "holly"
      },
      "expansion": "Middle English holly",
      "name": "inh"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "whole",
        "3": "-ly"
      },
      "expansion": "whole + -ly",
      "name": "affix"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From Middle English holly, holeliche, holliche (also as halely, hallich, etc.), equivalent to whole + -ly. Doublet of holy.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "wholly (not comparable)",
      "name": "en-adv"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "whol‧ly"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adv",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "100 0",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "100 0",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English positive polarity items",
          "parents": [
            "Positive polarity items",
            "Terms by semantic function"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "100 0",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms suffixed with -ly",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "100 0",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "100 0",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Joshua 14:9:",
          "text": "And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet haue troden, shall be thine inheritance, and thy childrens for euer, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord my God.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:",
          "text": "Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1930, Adrian Bell, Corduroy, Faber and Faber:",
          "text": "‘You ain't very strong, are you?’ said a neighbour with sympathetic intent, and ‘You don't have very good health, I expect?’ asked another. Mr Colville said, ‘He do look wholly pale, that's a fact.’ The word ‘wholly’ thus used puzzled me for some time. In Suffolk it is used for ‘very’ or ‘really’, and crops up in almost every sentence. But at first I thought Mr Colville was ascribing to me an air of sanctity.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 December 19, Kerry Brown, “Kim Jong-il obituary”, in The Guardian:",
          "text": "With the descent of the cold war, relations between the two countries (for this is, to all intents and purposes, what they became after the end of the war) were almost completely broken off, with whole families split for the ensuing decades, some for ever. This event and its after-effects, along with the war against the Japanese in the 1940s, was to cast a long shadow over the years ahead, and led to the creation of the wholly unprecedented worship of Kim Il-sung, and his elevation to almost God-like status. It was also to create the system in which his son was to occupy almost as impossibly elevated a position.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 December 20, Hayley Tsukayama, “Report: Apple partner Pegatron under scrutiny after blast”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2011-12-20, Tech:",
          "text": "The explosion rocked the Riteng Computer Accessory Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Pegatron, in Shanghai’s Songjiang district.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Completely and entirely; to the fullest extent; (loosely, exaggeratedly) very; to a great extent."
      ],
      "id": "en-wholly-en-adv-UdwX-JHT",
      "links": [
        [
          "Completely",
          "completely"
        ],
        [
          "entirely",
          "entirely"
        ],
        [
          "fullest",
          "fullest"
        ],
        [
          "extent",
          "extent"
        ],
        [
          "exaggerate",
          "exaggerate"
        ],
        [
          "very",
          "very"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "100 0",
          "sense": "to the fullest extent",
          "word": "completely"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "not-comparable"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "A creature wholly given to brawls and wine.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Exclusively and solely."
      ],
      "id": "en-wholly-en-adv-FGy6NghI",
      "links": [
        [
          "Exclusively",
          "exclusively"
        ],
        [
          "solely",
          "solely"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "0 100",
          "sense": "exclusively",
          "word": "entirely"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "not-comparable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈhəʊ.li/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "[ˈhəʊ.lɪ]",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈhəʊl.li/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "[ˈhɒʊɫ.lɪ]",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈhoʊ.li/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "[ˈhoʊ.li]",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈhoʊl.li/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "[ˈhoʊɫ.li]",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-wholly.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/26/En-us-wholly.ogg/En-us-wholly.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/En-us-wholly.ogg"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "holey"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "holy"
    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-əʊli"
    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-əʊlli"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "totally"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "completely"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "solely"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "wholely"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "tags": [
        "obsolete"
      ],
      "word": "wholy"
    }
  ],
  "word": "wholly"
}
{
  "antonyms": [
    {
      "sense": "antonym(s) of “completely”",
      "word": "partly"
    }
  ],
  "categories": [
    "English adverbs",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English positive polarity items",
    "English terms derived from Middle English",
    "English terms inherited from Middle English",
    "English terms suffixed with -ly",
    "English terms with homophones",
    "English uncomparable adverbs",
    "Pages with 1 entry",
    "Pages with entries",
    "Rhymes:English/əʊli",
    "Rhymes:English/əʊli/2 syllables",
    "Rhymes:English/əʊlli",
    "Rhymes:English/əʊlli/2 syllables"
  ],
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "enm",
        "3": "holly"
      },
      "expansion": "Middle English holly",
      "name": "inh"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "whole",
        "3": "-ly"
      },
      "expansion": "whole + -ly",
      "name": "affix"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From Middle English holly, holeliche, holliche (also as halely, hallich, etc.), equivalent to whole + -ly. Doublet of holy.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "wholly (not comparable)",
      "name": "en-adv"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "whol‧ly"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "adv",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Joshua 14:9:",
          "text": "And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet haue troden, shall be thine inheritance, and thy childrens for euer, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord my God.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:",
          "text": "Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1930, Adrian Bell, Corduroy, Faber and Faber:",
          "text": "‘You ain't very strong, are you?’ said a neighbour with sympathetic intent, and ‘You don't have very good health, I expect?’ asked another. Mr Colville said, ‘He do look wholly pale, that's a fact.’ The word ‘wholly’ thus used puzzled me for some time. In Suffolk it is used for ‘very’ or ‘really’, and crops up in almost every sentence. But at first I thought Mr Colville was ascribing to me an air of sanctity.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 December 19, Kerry Brown, “Kim Jong-il obituary”, in The Guardian:",
          "text": "With the descent of the cold war, relations between the two countries (for this is, to all intents and purposes, what they became after the end of the war) were almost completely broken off, with whole families split for the ensuing decades, some for ever. This event and its after-effects, along with the war against the Japanese in the 1940s, was to cast a long shadow over the years ahead, and led to the creation of the wholly unprecedented worship of Kim Il-sung, and his elevation to almost God-like status. It was also to create the system in which his son was to occupy almost as impossibly elevated a position.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011 December 20, Hayley Tsukayama, “Report: Apple partner Pegatron under scrutiny after blast”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2011-12-20, Tech:",
          "text": "The explosion rocked the Riteng Computer Accessory Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Pegatron, in Shanghai’s Songjiang district.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Completely and entirely; to the fullest extent; (loosely, exaggeratedly) very; to a great extent."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Completely",
          "completely"
        ],
        [
          "entirely",
          "entirely"
        ],
        [
          "fullest",
          "fullest"
        ],
        [
          "extent",
          "extent"
        ],
        [
          "exaggerate",
          "exaggerate"
        ],
        [
          "very",
          "very"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "not-comparable"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with usage examples"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "A creature wholly given to brawls and wine.",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Exclusively and solely."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "Exclusively",
          "exclusively"
        ],
        [
          "solely",
          "solely"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "not-comparable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈhəʊ.li/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "[ˈhəʊ.lɪ]",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈhəʊl.li/",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "[ˈhɒʊɫ.lɪ]",
      "tags": [
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈhoʊ.li/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "[ˈhoʊ.li]",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈhoʊl.li/",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "[ˈhoʊɫ.li]",
      "tags": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-us-wholly.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/26/En-us-wholly.ogg/En-us-wholly.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/En-us-wholly.ogg"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "holey"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "holy"
    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-əʊli"
    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-əʊlli"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "sense": "to the fullest extent",
      "word": "completely"
    },
    {
      "word": "totally"
    },
    {
      "word": "completely"
    },
    {
      "sense": "exclusively",
      "word": "entirely"
    },
    {
      "word": "solely"
    },
    {
      "word": "wholely"
    },
    {
      "tags": [
        "obsolete"
      ],
      "word": "wholy"
    }
  ],
  "word": "wholly"
}

Download raw JSONL data for wholly meaning in English (5.0kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-11-04 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-10-02 using wiktextract (d6bf104 and a5af179). 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.