all in all
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English
Etymology
(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)
Pronunciation
Audio (General Australian): (file)
Adverb
all in all (not comparable)
- (modal, set phrase) Generally, all things considered
- All in all, it's not a bad little restaurant.
- 1951 April, Stirling Everard, “A Matter of Pedigree”, in Railway Magazine, number 600, page 273:
- There are, of course, certain differences of detail; for example, the placing of the safety valves on the boiler barrel behind the dome, which follows the practice in the Riddles 2-8-0 and 2-10-0 locomotives for the Ministry of Supply; but taken all in all, Britannia's boiler has a closer affinity with the Doncaster designs than with any other.
- Altogether, in all, with everything included
- There were twenty absentees all in all.
- (archaic) Altogether, wholly, in every way
- 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto XIV, page 23:
- And I perceived no touch of change,
No hint of death in all his frame,
But found him all in all the same, […]
Synonyms
- (generally): for the most part, mostly, on the whole; see also Thesaurus:mostly
Translations
generally
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Noun
all in all (uncountable)
- Everything that matters; the only thing of importance.
- 1822, William Goode, Essays on all the scriptural names and titles of Christ, page 181:
- […] to realize, by constant faith, the all-sufficiency of his redeeming power and love — to make him all his salvation and all his desire, the Alpha and Omega of all his hope, his all in all.
- 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
- You saw us all in happier days before he married me. I was all in all then to him; or would he have given up his fortune, his family, as he nobly did to make me happy?
- 1828, Constantine Henry Phipps Marquess of Normanby, Yes and No: a Tale of the Day, page 12:
- Her mother had been all in all to her: she had never seemed to have any separate existence from that of her child.
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