Word.ws English Dictionary

of all things

of all things prepositional phrase: especially; more than other things.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Especially; more than other things.
  2. (idiomatic, often) Surprisingly.
    • He reached into his pocket and pulled out, of all things, an ice cream cone.
    • Well, of all things! Who would have expected him to propose to her on stage?

Examples of of all things in a sentence

  • “Well, of all things!” cried the equally astonished Jane.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 111:
  • “Your father, in a rock band of all things!2009 October 29, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Mr Stink, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN:
  • Liverpool needed a break and they got it at the beginning of the second half, from, of all things, a misplaced City pass.2024 March 10, David Hytner, “Doku involved at both ends as Liverpool and Manchester City share spoils”, in The Guardian:

Questions about of all things

What does of all things mean?
Of all things means especially; more than other things.
How do you use of all things in a sentence?
“Well, of all things!” cried the equally astonished Jane.
What part of speech is of all things?
Of all things is a prepositional phrase.

Words near of all things in the dictionary

  1. of all
  2. of all conscience
  3. of all loves
  4. of all people
  5. of all places
  6. of all things
  7. of all time
  8. of all times
  9. of an
  10. of any use
  11. of blessed memory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: of all things (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-of all things.ogg.

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