whole
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /həʊl/
ipa: [həʊɫ]
ipa: [hɒʊɫ]
ipa: /hoʊl/
ipa: [hoʊɫ]
ipa: [hoːɫ]
ipa: /hɔːl/
ipa: /hwɔːl/
homophone: hole
rhymes: -əʊl
Forms: form: wholer
form: more whole
form: wholest
form: most whole
form: hole
Etymology: From Middle English hol, hole (“healthy, unhurt, whole”), from Old English hāl (“healthy, safe”), from Proto-West Germanic *hail, from Proto-Germanic *hailaz (“whole, safe, sound”), from Proto-Indo-European *kéh₂ilos (“healthy, whole”).
The spelling with wh-, introduced in the 15th century, represents a pronunciation with an excrescent /w/ that failed to survive in the standard language (compare one, whore).
Cognates
Compare West Frisian hiel, Low German heel/heil, Dutch heel, German heil, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål hel, Norwegian Nynorsk heil; also Welsh coel (“omen”), Breton kel (“omen, mention”), Old Prussian kails (“healthy”), Old Church Slavonic цѣлъ (cělŭ, “healthy, unhurt”). Related to hale, health, hail, hallow, heal, and holy.
Senses: examples: text: I ate a whole fish.
text: During the whole time of his abode in the university he generally spent thirteen hours of the day in study; by which assiduity besides an exact dispatch of the whole course of philosophy, he read over in a manner all classic authors that are extant[…]
ref: 1661, John Fell, The Life of the most learned, reverend and pious Dr. H. Hammond:
text: Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging. […] He walked the whole way, walking through crowds, and under the noses of dray-horses, carriage-horses, and cart-horses, without taking the least notice of them.
ref: 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 16:
text: “[…] She takes the whole thing with desperate seriousness. But the others are all easy and jovial—thinking about the good fare that is soon to be eaten, about the hired fly, about anything.”
ref: 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVI, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
text: Floods in northern India, mostly in the small state of Uttarakhand, have wrought disaster on an enormous scale. The early, intense onset of the monsoon on June 14th swelled rivers, washing away roads, bridges, hotels and even whole villages.
ref: 2013 June 29, “High and wet”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 28:
synonyms: word: total
word: complete
word: entire
word: holo-
word: one
word: overall
word: total
word: whole
glosses: Entire, undivided.
examples: text: I brought a whole lot of balloons for the party. She ate a whole bunch of french fries.
text: There, a huge blue heron stands sentry like a statue, eye on the surface, waiting for his next meal to wriggle by. A lone grassy hill overlooks it all, well above the flood line, big enough to pitch a whole mess of tents [on].
ref: 2016, Rae Carson, Like a River Glorious, HarperCollins, →ISBN:
text: I'm thinking, thanks a whole fuck of a lot, Robert. You could have laid that on me weeks ago.
ref: 2011, Keith Maillard, Looking Good: Difficulty at the Beginning, Brindle and Glass, →ISBN:
synonyms: word: total
word: complete
word: entire
word: holo-
word: one
word: overall
word: total
word: whole
glosses: Entire, undivided.
Used as an intensifier.
examples: text: He is of whole mind, but the same cannot be said about his physical state.
text: Here, with one balm for many fevers found, / Whole of an ancient evil, I sleep sound.
ref: 1939, Alfred Edward Housman, Additional Poems, X, lines 5-6:
synonyms: word: hale
word: well
word: all oak and iron bound
word: buxom
word: fit
word: hail
word: hale
word: hale and hearty
word: healthy
word: in the pink of health
word: lusty
word: sound
word: sound as a barrel
word: sound as a bell
word: well
word: whole
glosses: Sound, uninjured, healthy.
examples: text: whole wheat; whole milk
glosses: From which none of its constituents has been removed.
raw_tags: of food
topics: business
mining
glosses: As yet unworked.