wholly

English

Alternative forms

wholely
wholy (obsolete)

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈhəʊ.li/, [ˈhəʊ.lɪ], /ˈhəʊl.li/, [ˈhɒʊɫ.lɪ]
(US) IPA^(key): /ˈhoʊ.li/, [ˈhoʊ.li], /ˈhoʊl.li/, [ˈhoʊɫ.li]
Audio (US): (file)
Homophones: holey, holy
Rhymes: -əʊli, -əʊlli
Hyphenation: whol‧ly

Adverb

wholly (not comparable)

Completely and entirely; to the fullest extent; (loosely, exaggeratedly) very; to a great extent.
Wholly, in my opinion, this is wrong.
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 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:
  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.
- 1930, Adrian Bell, Corduroy, Faber and Faber:
  ‘You ain't very strong, are you?’ said a neighbour with sympathetic intent, and ‘You don't have very good health, I expect?’ asked another. Mr Colville said, ‘He do look wholly pale, that's a fact.’ The word ‘wholly’ thus used puzzled me for some time. In Suffolk it is used for ‘very’ or ‘really’, and crops up in almost every sentence. But at first I thought Mr Colville was ascribing to me an air of sanctity.
- 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.
- 2011 December 20, Hayley Tsukayama, “Report: Apple partner Pegatron under scrutiny after blast”, in The Washington Post‎^[1], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 20 December 2011, Tech‎^[2]:
  The explosion rocked the Riteng Computer Accessory Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Pegatron, in Shanghai’s Songjiang district.
Exclusively and solely.
A creature wholly given to brawls and wine.

Synonyms

(to the fullest extent): completely, totally; see also Thesaurus:completely
(exclusively): entirely, solely; see also Thesaurus:solely

Antonyms

(antonym(s) of “completely”): partly

Translations

to the fullest extent — see completely