wholly
/ˈhoʊ.li/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.83 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
adv
adv
Exclusively and solely.
Example Sentences
- "wholly wrong"
- "a wholly-owned subsidiary"
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "The explosion rocked the Riteng Computer Accessory Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Pegatron, in Shanghai’s Songjiang district."
Etymology
From Middle English holly, holeliche, holliche (also as halely, hallich, etc.). Doublet of earlier holy. By surface analysis, whol(e) + -ly.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈhoʊ.li/
- British English: /ˈhəʊ.li/