Word.ws English Dictionary

all-out

all-out adjective: using every available means. Also the alternative form of all out.

Adjective

all-out (not comparable)

  1. Using every available means.
    • They were planning to launch an all-out attack against the enemy.
    • Chapter Six is an all-out defense of pornography1995, Wendy McElroy, “Preface”, in XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography, archived from the original on 10 Apr 2007
  2. Covering all aspects without exception.
    • This book is an all-out examination of a very important issue in our community.

Also used as

all-out is also the alternative form of all out.

Examples of all-out in a sentence

  • Eventually the NUR overplayed its hands with an all-out strike.2022 December 14, Christian Wolmar, “Productivity should play no part in pay negotiations”, in RAIL, number 972, page 46:
  • And they, too, risk escalation into all-out war that pulls in the United States.2026 January 17, Nicholas Kristof, “How War With China Begins”, in The New York Times (Opinion section), New York, N.Y.: The New York Times...

Origin of all-out

From all + out.

Words formed from all-out

Questions about all-out

What does all-out mean?
All-out means using every available means.
How do you use all-out in a sentence?
Eventually the NUR overplayed its hands with an all-out strike.
What part of speech is all-out?
All-out is an adjective.

Words near all-out in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all-out (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-all-out.wav.

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