Word.ws English Dictionary

less so

less so adjective: contextual comparative. Modifies another adjective (to which the "so" is a direct anaphoric reference), indicating a lesser degree of the quality in question.

Adjective

less so (not comparable)

  1. Contextual comparative. Modifies another adjective (to which the "so" is a direct anaphoric reference), indicating a lesser degree of the quality in question.
    • Some are rich, others less so.

Questions about less so

What does less so mean?
Less so means contextual comparative. Modifies another adjective (to which the "so" is a direct anaphoric reference), indicating a lesser degree of the quality in question.
What part of speech is less so?
Less so is an adjective.

Words near less so in the dictionary

  1. less
  2. less and less
  3. less is a bore
  4. less is more
  5. less known
  6. less so
  7. less than
  8. less than no time
  9. less than nothing
  10. less than stellar
  11. less than three

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: less so (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: “less so.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/less_so. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.