Word.ws English Dictionary

all-but

all-but is the alternative spelling of all but.

Meaning of all but

Adverb

all but (not comparable)

  1. Very nearly; everything short of. Most often precedes a verb or adjective.
    • The food is all but finished.
  2. Everything except. Typically precedes a noun or noun phrase.
    • All but three of the students skipped school the day of the parade.

Questions about all-but

What is all-but the alternative spelling of?
All-but is the alternative spelling of all but.

Words near all-but in the dictionary

  1. all-arounder
  2. all-arounders
  3. all-as-one
  4. all-becrushing
  5. all-boys
  6. all-but
  7. all-caps
  8. all-cargo
  9. all-cause
  10. all-clear
  11. all-comers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all-but (page history and authors); all but (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “all-but.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/all-but. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.