Word.ws English Dictionary

upon the whole

upon the whole is the dated form of on the whole.

Meaning of on the whole

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) For the most part; apart from some insignificant details.
    • The language was wrong for the period, but, on the whole, I enjoyed the film.

Questions about upon the whole

What is upon the whole the dated form of?
Upon the whole is the dated form of on the whole.

Words near upon the whole in the dictionary

  1. upon the pad
  2. upon the point of
  3. upon the square
  4. upon the strength of
  5. upon the tapis
  6. upon the whole
  7. upon the whole matter
  8. upon the wing
  9. upon't
  10. uposatha
  11. uposathas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: upon the whole (page history and authors); on the whole (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: “upon the whole.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/upon_the_whole. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.