Word.ws English Dictionary

to the effect

to the effect prepositional phrase: with more or less the meaning of.

Prepositional phrase

  1. With more or less the meaning of.
    • He was vague but said something to the effect that he'd do it soon.
    • “You said something to the effect of, ‘You gotta start doing something different,’” the pop star recalled of the initial conversation with her mom.2026 July 4, Brittany Spanos, “Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce marry at New York City’s Madison Square Garden”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
    Synonyms:
    along those lines

Synonyms of to the effect

  • along those lines

Forms of to the effect

alternative formto that effect
alternative formto this effect

Questions about to the effect

What does to the effect mean?
To the effect means with more or less the meaning of.
What part of speech is to the effect?
To the effect is a prepositional phrase.

Words near to the effect in the dictionary

  1. to the contrary
  2. to the core
  3. to the day
  4. to the death
  5. to the dot
  6. to the effect
  7. to the end of the chapter
  8. to the end of time
  9. to the exclusion of
  10. to the extent that
  11. to the fore

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: to the effect (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: “to the effect.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/to_the_effect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.