Word.ws English Dictionary

all-or-nothing

all-or-nothing adjective: being or relating to a situation where a dichotomy (a binary state) pertains: either of two poles is instantiated, with no intermediate state (e.g., a mixture or syncretism) being possible or being permitted.

Adjective

all-or-nothing (not comparable)

  1. Being or relating to a situation where a dichotomy (a binary state) pertains: either of two poles is instantiated, with no intermediate state (e.g., a mixture or syncretism) being possible or being permitted.
    • Near-synonyms: black-and-white, dichotomous, all-or-none
    1. Being or relating to a project that will either succeed completely or fail completely.
      • A crewed moonshot is an all-or-nothing affair: either they get to the moon and back alive, or they don't.

Synonyms of all-or-nothing

Questions about all-or-nothing

What does all-or-nothing mean?
All-or-nothing means being or relating to a situation where a dichotomy (a binary state) pertains: either of two poles is instantiated, with no intermediate state (e.g., a mixture or syncretism) being possible or being permitted.
What part of speech is all-or-nothing?
All-or-nothing is an adjective.

Words near all-or-nothing in the dictionary

  1. all-nite
  2. all-one polynomial
  3. all-one polynomials
  4. all-operator
  5. all-or-none
  6. all-or-nothing
  7. all-out
  8. all-outer
  9. all-outers
  10. all-over
  11. all-over painting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all-or-nothing (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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