From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishwholewhole1 /həʊl $ hoʊl/ ●●● S1 W1 adjective 1 ALL/EVERYTHING[only before noun] all of something SYN entire You have your whole life ahead of you! His whole attitude bugs me. We ate the whole cake in about ten minutes. The whole thing (=everything about the situation) just makes me sick. We just sat around and watched TV the whole time (=the only thing we did was watch television). I don’t believe she’s telling us the whole story (=all the facts). It was months before the whole truth came out.the whole school/country/village etc (=all the people in a school, country etc) The whole town came out for the parade.2 → whole lot3 → a whole range/series/variety etc (of something)4 COMPLETEcomplete and not divided or broken into parts Place a whole onion inside the chicken. a snake swallowing a mouse whole (=swallowing it without chewing)5 → the whole point (of something)6 → in the whole (wide) world7 → go the whole hog8 → the whole nine yards —wholeness noun [uncountable] → a whole new ball game at ball game(3), → the whole shebang at shebang, → the whole shooting match at shooting match, → the whole enchilada at enchilada(3), → wholly
Examples from the Corpus
whole• "I want the whole area searched!" said the chief of police.• And why, if they are so pious, are there speculators who buy up whole blocks of houses with inflated currency?• She was so frightened, her whole body was shaking.• I drank a whole bottle of wine by myself.• She drank a whole bottle of wine.• It took a whole day to get the computers running again.• The name of this caput is usually the same as the whole estate and it is often recorded very early on.• Nora had spent her whole life trying to find happiness.• I have a whole magazine that exists for no other reason than to publicize me.• She spent the whole of the journey complaining about her boyfriend.• The Romans conquered almost the whole of Western Europe.• After spending years piecing together fragments, we now have the whole original manuscript.• Indeed the whole question of when a product becomes too expensive to be offered as a sample is very difficult.• In every community there are groups of people who help form your opinions about a whole range of things.• There must be a whole shelf of books claiming to tell you how to tap the right brain.• If the boy was actually here at the house he must have spent the whole time with Lois and her little tour.• It seemed to be testing him the whole time.• I didn't see her again for a whole year.The whole thing• Here we are, second-class citizens in our own country. The whole thing embarrasses her.• Sofia had never given him any encouragement. The whole thing had been a fantasy, and that was that.• He is soft-spoken and his message is understated. The whole thing is a little ironic, but nobody seems to notice.• The whole thing really irritates me.• He felt like a circus. The whole thing was irregular.• They both knew where I lived. The whole thing was like watching snooker on a black-and-white telly.• They wheeled us on in the background like a couple of fossils. The whole thing was nonsense from start to finish.swallowing ... whole• Haupt, Jesselson, and Arnold swallowed small pizzas whole.• If either railroad swallowed Conrail whole, it would dominate railroading east of the Mississippi River.• If we are to digest it properly it must be swallowed whole.• Oil giants such as Getty were stalked by takeover wildcatter T Boone Pickens and swallowed whole by others.• The prey is then drawn up to the mouth and swallowed whole.• What was really wonderful was that the paper swallowed the hoax whole.wholewhole2 ●●● S2 W2 noun 1 → the whole of something2 → on the whole3 → as a whole4 [countable usually singular]COMPLETE something that consists of a number of parts, but is considered as a single unit Two halves make a whole.Examples from the Corpus
whole• As a result the business class as a whole exhibits a high degree of integration and social cohesion ...• Therefore the development of democracy in production is the most important trend in deepening and broadening socialist democracy as a whole.• The accounts of the National Health Service as a whole offer a good example.• For it is this, as the whole of physic teaches, which destroys our body more than any other cause.• In fact, Dunrossness has long been considered to be the most fertile and agriculturally productive area in the whole of Shetland.• In the whole of 1995, imports accounted for 58 % compared with 57 % in 1994.• On the whole it seems difficult to believe they are very important.Origin whole1 Old English hal “healthy, unhurt, complete” 