wholly

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English holly, holeliche, holliche (also as halely, hallich, etc.), equivalent to whole +‎ -ly.

Pronunciation
  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈhəʊli/, [ˈhəʊ.lɪ], /ˈhəʊlli/, [ˈhɒʊ̯ɫ.lɪ]
  • (US) IPA(key): /ˈhoʊli/, [ˈhoʊ.li], /ˈhoʊli/, [ˈhoʊ̯ɫ.li]
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Homophones: holey, holy
  • Rhymes: -əʊli, -əʊlli
  • Hyphenation: whol‧ly

Adverb

wholly (not comparable)

  1. Completely and entirely; to the fullest extent.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981, Joshua 14:9:
      And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet haue troden, shall be thine inheritance, and thy childrens for euer, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord my God.
    • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 639762314, page 0147:
      Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations.
    • 2011 December 19, Kerry Brown, “Kim Jong-il obituary”, in The Guardian:
      With the descent of the cold war, relations between the two countries (for this is, to all intents and purposes, what they became after the end of the war) were almost completely broken off, with whole families split for the ensuing decades, some for ever. This event and its after-effects, along with the war against the Japanese in the 1940s, was to cast a long shadow over the years ahead, and led to the creation of the wholly unprecedented worship of Kim Il-sung, and his elevation to almost God-like status. It was also to create the system in which his son was to occupy almost as impossibly elevated a position.
  2. Exclusively and solely.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Translations
to the fullest extent — see completely
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