Word.ws English Dictionary

all the world and his wife

all the world and his wife noun: everybody imaginable.

Noun

all the world and his wife pl (plural only)

  1. (colloquial, plural, plural-only) Everybody imaginable.

Origin of all the world and his wife

From Polite Conversation by Jonathan Swift, 1731.

Questions about all the world and his wife

What does all the world and his wife mean?
All the world and his wife means everybody imaginable.
What part of speech is all the world and his wife?
All the world and his wife is a noun.

Words near all the world and his wife in the dictionary

  1. all the way
  2. all the way to Egery and back
  3. all the way to Sunday
  4. all the while
  5. all the world
  6. all the world and his wife
  7. all the world and Little Billing
  8. all the world's a stage
  9. all there
  10. all things
  11. all things being equal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all the world and his wife (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:

Cite this entry: “all the world and his wife.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/all_the_world_and_his_wife. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.