Library / English Dictionary

WHOLLY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (adverb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

To a complete degree or to the full or entire extent ('whole' is often used informally for 'wholly')

Example:

he fell right into the trap

Synonyms:

all; altogether; completely; entirely; right; totally; whole; wholly

Classified under:

Adverbs

Antonym:

partly (to some extent; in some degree; not wholly)

Pertainym:

whole (including all components without exception; being one unit or constituting the full amount or extent or duration; complete)

Credits

 Context examples: 

And the shadow I have mentioned, that was not to be between us any more, but was to rest wholly on my own heart?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

'First Principles is not wholly destitute of a certain literary power,' said one of them.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

You will find, whenever the subject becomes freed from its present restraints, that it did not take her wholly by surprize.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

What could more plainly speak the gloomy workings of a mind not wholly dead to every sense of humanity, in its fearful review of past scenes of guilt?

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

We compute the Tramecksan, or high heels, to exceed us in number; but the power is wholly on our side.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

A tumor composed, wholly or in part, of cells with the morphologic characteristics of histiocytes and with various fibroblastic components.

(Benign Fibrous Histiocytoma, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

The phenomenon of coinciding partially or wholly; extending over and covering a part of.

(Overlap, NCI Thesaurus)

Clerval had never sympathised in my tastes for natural science; and his literary pursuits differed wholly from those which had occupied me.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Don't think I came here looking for you, Theresa. Your vanity shall not be tickled by any such misapprehension. Our meeting is wholly fortuitous.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

His tall, gaunt, stringy figure is insensible to fatigue, and his dry, half-sarcastic, and often wholly unsympathetic manner is uninfluenced by any change in his surroundings.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)