wholly
adverb
1.
to a complete degree or to the full or entire extent (`whole' is often used informally for `wholly')
- “he was wholly convinced”
- “entirely satisfied with the meal”
- “it was completely different from what we expected”
- “was completely at fault”
- “a totally new situation”
- “the directions were all wrong”
- “it was not altogether her fault”
- “an altogether new approach”
- “a whole new idea”
Origin
From Middle English holly, holeliche, holliche (also as halely, hallich, etc.). Doublet of earlier holy. By surface analysis, whol(e) + -ly.
Related words
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.