Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use wholly in a sentence

40 example sentences · adverb

Wholly means completely and entirely; to the fullest extent. Example: “A creature wholly given to brawls and wine.”

Examples of wholly by meaning

adverbCompletely and entirely; to the fullest extent.

  • a wholly-owned subsidiary
  • Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations.1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  • The explosion rocked the Riteng Computer Accessory Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Pegatron, in Shanghai’s Songjiang district.2011 December 20, Hayley Tsukayama, “Report: Apple partner Pegatron under scrutiny after blast”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC...

adverbVery; to a great extent.

  • Mr Colville said, ‘He do look wholly pale, that's a fact.’ The word ‘wholly’ thus used puzzled me for some time.1930, Adrian Bell, Corduroy, Faber and Faber

adverbExclusively and solely.

  • A creature wholly given to brawls and wine.

More sentences with wholly

  • This seems to be a recrudescent strain of the plague rather than a wholly new disease.From the entry recrudescent
  • While the initiated easily understand the symbols, they are wholly inaccessible to outsiders.From the entry outsider
  • George found Professor Schnublett's repetitive lectures to be wholly noneducational and, in fact, a waste of time.From the entry noneducational
  • The leaders of the Wall Cult seem to be aware of the truth, but remain wholly unforthcoming.From the entry unforthcoming
  • He was wholly abstracted by other objects.From the entry abstract
  • The scrap yard had bins marked for irony aluminum, such as aluminum engine blocks not wholly cleaned of bolts, studs, brackets, and so on.From the entry irony
  • A wholly British phenomenon, ladettism had unlikely roots in a macho, working-class subculture.2020 March, Sally Howard, The Home Stretch: Why the Gender Revolution Stalled at the Kitchen Sink, Atlantic Books, page 53. From the entry ladettism
  • Thus approximately 98% of signs contained English, and 93.5% of signs were wholly in English.2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual…. From the entry dominance
  • The cities of Aşgabat and Krasnovodsk were singled out as being wholly unprepared.2018 May 19, Victoria Clement, “From the ABCs to the ABCs of Communism, 1930–1953”, in Learning to Become Turkmen: Literacy, Language, and…. From the entry Aşgabat
  • Private, wholesome family time could no longer charade as being either private or wholly wholesome.2017, David Friend, The Naughty Nineties. From the entry charade
  • The smell of burnt flesh, which the perilla seeds couldn't wholly mask, pricked my nose.2015, Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith, The Vegetarian, Granta, published 2018, page 42. From the entry perilla
  • Unabashed cyber-libertarianism, combined with an avaricious and wholly unconflicted brand of consumerism, permeates America's digital elite.2015, Jacob Silverman, Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection. From the entry cyberlibertarianism
  • For those of you who aren't wholly up-to-date on the latest internet lingo, let me explain.2014, Larry Mogelonsky, Hotel Llama, Author House, →ISBN, page 318. From the entry haul video
  • Aren’t all baskets in fact handbaskets, and if they are, isn’t the prefix hand wholly unnecessary?2013, Paul Auster, Here and Now: Letters (2008–2011), page 182. From the entry handbasket
  • Paul where Warren made another speech, which—of course—from a lawyer's standpoint was wholly irrelevant and insulting.2013, Clarence Darrow, Randall Tietjen, In the Clutches of the Law: Clarence Darrow's Letters, page 153. From the entry one-horse lawyer
  • And not wholly remote from what we must call the Solo problem.2008, Michael Innes, Carson's Conspiracy, page 97. From the entry vaccimulgence
  • “The arguability of the claims depends wholly on oral conversations which are not documented,” he said.2008 April 19, John F. Burns, “Russian Feud Goes to Court in London”, in New York Times. From the entry arguability
  • In what world is it "wholly unconscionable and politically unpalatable" to deny Nigeria a Security Council veto?2005, Chicago journal of international law, volume 6, page 635. From the entry in what world
  • In this structure, the acquirer (A) forms a wholly owned subsidiary (call it NewCo).2003, William T. Allen, Reinier H. Kraakman, Commentaries and Cases on the Law of Business Organization, page 439. From the entry newco
  • What Daedadus really is, is the world's first successful wholly autonomous AI.2000, Sheldon Pacotti (writer) & Warren Spector (director/producer), Deus Ex. From the entry artificial intelligence
  • They would prefer that rights be derived wholly from function and reason.2000, George Schöpflin, Nations, Identity, Power: The New Politics of Europe, page 9. From the entry identity politics
  • They planned a new college of cardinals which would consist largely, if not wholly, of women.1996, Nigel Cawthorne, “Pope Joan”, in Sex Lives of the Popes: An Irreverent Exposé of the Bishops of Rome from St Peter to the Present…. From the entry Guglielmite
  • Some frogs, like the Platanna (Xenopus laevis), are wholly aquatic, living, feeding and breeding under water.1990, Louis Liebenberg, A Field Guide to the Animal Tracks of Southern Africa, David Philip Publishers, page 81. From the entry platanna
  • I am therefore not wholly convinced that we really have a later addition.1983, Christoph W[alter] Clairmont, Patrios Nomos: Public Burial in Athens during the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.: The Archaeological…. From the entry omikron
  • Today, regional diktat is now supplemented (though not wholly replaced) by other means of recruiting elites.1982, Steven L. Sampson, The Planners and the Peasants. From the entry diktat
  • Not that his achievement or his influence were ever, even in isolably literary terms, wholly good.1965, Marxism Today, volume 9, Communist Party of Great Britain. From the entry isolably
  • The four corypheuses are infallible; any contradiction between them is wholly out of the question.1953, Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, page 443. From the entry corypheus
  • His lifework was done and he was wholly prepared to rest.1935 March, Murray Leinster, “Proxima Centauri”, in Astounding Stories, volume 15, number 1, New York: Street & Smith Publications, page 21. From the entry first contact
  • One was wholly debranchiate, the other had but one gill plume remaining.1934, Natural History Report: Zoology VII, British Museum, page 144. From the entry debranchiate
  • The titlark, sheath-bill, teal, and goose of South Georgia are wholly or in part vegetable feeders.1922 April, Robert Cushman Murphy, “South Georgia, An Outpost of the Antarctic”, in National Geographic, volume 41, number 4, page 429. From the entry break-bones
  • He pulls the doorlet wholly open and plays with the pencil.1921 July, H. de Jong, “Essential Limitation and Subdivision of Idiocy on a Comparative-Psychological Basis”, in The Journal of Nervous…. From the entry doorlet
  • "Hetch Hetchy water is the purest, wholly unpolluted, and forever unpollutable."1908 January 4, John Muir, “The Hetch Hetchy Valley”, in Sierra Club Bulletin, volume VI, number 4. From the entry pure
  • Keeps colour vibrant and roots wholly ungunked.2022 November 18, Sali Hughes, “Budget beauty – Sali Hughes's 50 top picks under £20”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London…. From the entry ungunked
  • The Ahnerebe were pseudoarchaeologists, completely unconcerned with empirical rigour, reason or methodology and wholly committed to the quest for confirmation bias.2021, Otto English, Fake History, page 46. From the entry pseudoarchaeologist
  • These long stops essentially consist of a form of illegal, undocumented arrest, an investigation, and an “unarrest”—a wholly unconstitutional process.2020, Hannah L. F. Cooper, Mindy Thompson Fullilove, From Enforcers to Guardians. From the entry unarrest

Meaning of wholly

  1. adverb Completely and entirely; to the fullest extent.
  2. adverb Very; to a great extent.
  3. adverb Exclusively and solely.

Full definition of wholly

Questions about wholly in a sentence

How do you use wholly in a sentence?
Wholly is used as an adverb. For example: “A creature wholly given to brawls and wine.”
What is a short sentence with wholly?
“a wholly-owned subsidiary”
What does wholly mean?
Wholly means completely and entirely; to the fullest extent.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wholly (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use wholly in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/wholly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.