more or less
/mɔɹ ɔɹ lɛs/
more or less adverb: approximately.
Adverb
more or less (not comparable)
- Approximately.
- There were a hundred people in the room, more or less.
- The sporophyte foot is also characteristic: it is very broad and more or less lenticular or disciform, as broad or broader than the calyptra stalk[…], and is sessile on the calyptra base[…]1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page 5
- Synonyms:
- -ish, about, all but, almost, approaching, around, by and large, circa, close, close to
- Almost.
- I've more or less guaranteed myself a top mark in my final exams.
- Synonyms:
- all but, almost, as good as, as near as makes no difference, close to, fornigh, just about, near, near as damn it, nearly
- To varying extents, across instances; to an extent that varies among cases.
- [X] is always more or less of a [Y]
- Entrepreneurship is always more or less of a gamble.
more or less meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Telugu and Malayalam
more or less in Tamil
- approximately
- ஏறத்தாழ ēṟattāḻa
more or less in Urdu
- approximately
- کم و بیش kam-o-besh
more or less in Telugu
- approximately
- ఎక్కువతక్కువగా ekkuvatakkuvagā
more or less in Malayalam
- almost, nearly, approximately
- ഏറെക്കുറെ, ഏറിയോ കുറഞ്ഞോ, ഏറിയ അളവിലോ കുറഞ്ഞ അളവിലോ, മിക്കവാറും, ഊനാധികം, ഏതാണ്ടത്ര
More languagesFewer languages
- more or less in Tagalog
- humigit-kumulang
- more or less in Arabic
- حَوَالِي ḥawālī
- more or less in Malay
- lebih kurang
- more or less in Indonesian
- kurang lebih
Examples of more or less in a sentence
- The weaknesses of the many make the leader possible—and the man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan.1927, Elbert Hubbard, The Notebook of Elbert Hubbard: Mottos, Epigrams, Short Essays, Passages, Orphic Sayings and Preachments: Coined from...
- So you’re at their mercy on both ends, more or less.2011 [1974], Pierce Walker, quotee, edited by Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What...
Synonyms of more or less
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of more or less
| alternative form | more-or-less |
|---|
Questions about more or less
- What does more or less mean?
- More or less means approximately.
- What is more or less in Tamil?
- More or less in Tamil is ஏறத்தாழ (ēṟattāḻa). See More or less meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use more or less in a sentence?
- The weaknesses of the many make the leader possible—and the man who craves disciples and wants followers is always more or less of a charlatan.
- What part of speech is more or less?
- More or less is an adverb.
- How do you pronounce more or less?
- More or less is pronounced /mɔɹ ɔɹ lɛs/ (US).
Words near more or less in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: more or less (page history and authors); more or less (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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: en-us-more-or-less.ogg.
Cite this entry: “more or less.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/more_or_less. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.