Word.ws English Dictionary

making all the difference

making all the difference is the present participle and gerund of make all the difference.

Meaning of make all the difference

Verb

make all the difference (third-person singular simple present makes all the difference, present participle making all the difference, simple past and past participle made all the difference)

  1. (idiomatic) To be a crucial or deciding factor; to have a very significant effect (often a positive one).
    • We are all framed of the same mold, hewed out of the same Rocke, made as it were, of the same cloth, the sheares, as they say, onely going betweene; it is therefore onely the free loue and grace of God, which makes all the difference.1626, Robert Bolton, Some Generall Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God, London: Edmund Weaver, page 17

Questions about making all the difference

What is making all the difference the present participle and gerund of?
Making all the difference is the present participle and gerund of make all the difference.

Words near making all the difference in the dictionary

  1. making a Virginia fence
  2. making a virtue of necessity
  3. making a wrong turn at Albuquerque
  4. making after
  5. making against
  6. making all the difference
  7. making all the running
  8. making amends
  9. making an appearance
  10. making an ass of
  11. making an effort

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: making all the difference (page history and authors); make all the difference (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: “making all the difference.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/making_all_the_difference. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.