Link Centre Dictionary

wholly

UK/ˈhəʊ.li/ US/ˈhəʊ.lɪ/ uncommon informal

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

Pertaining to

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.