Join free

whole

AI In plain words

Writing a short explanation…

Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.

whole

  • /həʊl/ UK
  • [hɜʊ̯ɫ] UK
  • [hɒʊ̯ɫ] UK
  • [-ɫ̩] UK
  • /hɔl/ British, Southern, Standard
  • /hoʊl/ Canada, US
  • [hoʊ̯ɫ] Canada, US
  • [hoːɫ] Canada, US
  • [-ɫ̩] Canada, US
  • /hɔːl/ Early Modern
  • /hwɔːl/ Early Modern, rare

Sounds like hole · Rhymes with -əʊl

Where it comes from

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *kéh₂ilos

Proto-Germanic *hailaz

Proto-West Germanic *hail

Old English hāl

Middle English hol

English whole

From Middle English whol, 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-, attested since ca. 1400, represents an excrescent /w/, which developed in words with initial /(h)ɔː/, /(h)oː/ in southwestern dialects of Middle English. While this pronunciation did not establish itself in the standard language (except in one), the spelling survived in whole and whore, in the former case likely reinforced by a desire to disambiguate from hole.

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. False cognate of Ancient Greek ὅλος (hólos).

adjective wholer · more whole · wholest · most whole · hole

  1. Entire, undivided. I ate a whole fish.
  2. Used as an intensifier. I brought a whole lot of balloons for the party. She ate a whole bunch of french fries.
  3. Sound, uninjured, healthy. He is of whole mind, but the same cannot be said about his physical state.
  4. From which none of its constituents has been removed. whole wheat; whole milk
  5. As yet unworked.

adverb more whole · most whole · hole

  1. colloquial In entirety; entirely; wholly. I ate a fish whole!

noun wholes · hole

  1. Something complete, without any parts missing. This variety of fascinating details didn't fall together into an enjoyable, coherent whole.
  2. An entirety. It is not clear how she imagined the Bolsheviks could keep themselves in power in 1918 while allowing free elections, since the proletariat was only a minority and it could not by any means be supposed that the whole of it would vote for them.

Talk about this word