whole shebang
whole shebang noun: everything; the entire thing.
Noun
whole shebang (plural whole shebangs)
- Everything; the entire thing.
- The festival had balloons, flowers, fireworks, performers, and the whole shebang.
- On the third the whole "chebang" was removed [...]1863, James Bryan, A Short Account of the "Mary Ann" Hospital, Grand Gulf, Miss.
- Synonyms:
- all the marbles, bag and baggage, everytang, everything but the galley stove, everything but the kitchen sink, everything under the sun, full monty, hook, line and sinker, kit and caboodle
Synonyms of whole shebang
- all the marbles
- bag and baggage
- everytang
- everything but the galley stove
- everything but the kitchen sink
- everything under the sun
- full monty
- hook
- line and sinker
- kit and caboodle
13 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of whole shebang
| plural | whole shebangs |
|---|---|
| alternative form | whole chebang |
| alternative form | whole shabang |
Origin of whole shebang
Fixed expression from shebang, first attested in the United States from the early 1860s, from which time it has increasingly dominated the uses of "shebang" itself.
Questions about whole shebang
- What does whole shebang mean?
- Whole shebang means everything; the entire thing.
- What part of speech is whole shebang?
- Whole shebang is a noun.
- What is the plural of whole shebang?
- The plural of whole shebang is whole shebangs.
Words near whole shebang in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: whole shebang (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-whole shebang.ogg.
Cite this entry: “whole shebang.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whole_shebang. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.