all-encompassing
all-encompassing adjective: including everything; universal.
Adjective
all-encompassing (comparative more all-encompassing, superlative most all-encompassing)
- Including everything; universal.
- The desire to get back into the womb can become, in a creative way, a making of a womb out of the whole world, including everything in the womb (the city, the enlarged universe of Black Spring, of The Black Book), the all-englobing, all-encompassing womb, holding everything.1967, Anaïs Nin, edited by Gunther Stuhlmann, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1939, Swallow Press, page 173
- This essay, "Identity: Skin Blood Heart," is an account of her struggle to wrench herself free from the all-encompassing racist indoctrination that white people in North America are taught.1985 February 2, Malkah Barrsey Feldman, “Blacks & Jews: Vulnerability & Values”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 28, page 9
- Synonyms:
- comprehensive, overall, all around, all-embracing, all-inclusive
Synonyms of all-encompassing
Forms of all-encompassing
| comparative | more all-encompassing |
|---|---|
| superlative | most all-encompassing |
Origin of all-encompassing
From all- + encompassing.
Questions about all-encompassing
- What does all-encompassing mean?
- All-encompassing means including everything; universal.
- What part of speech is all-encompassing?
- All-encompassing is an adjective.
Words near all-encompassing in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: all-encompassing (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-all-encompassing.oga.
Cite this entry: “all-encompassing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/all-encompassing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.