Word.ws English Dictionary

wholely

wholely is the alternative spelling of wholly.

Meaning of wholly

Adverb

wholly (not comparable)

  1. Completely and entirely; to the fullest extent.
    • wholly wrong
    1. (dialectal, excessive, informal) Very; to a great extent.
      • ‘You ain't very strong, are you?’ said a neighbour with sympathetic intent, and ‘You don't have very good health, I expect?’ asked another. Mr Colville said, ‘He do look wholly pale, that's a fact.’ The word ‘wholly’ thus used puzzled me for some time. In Suffolk it is used for ‘very’ or ‘really’...1930, Adrian Bell, Corduroy, Faber and Faber
  2. Exclusively and solely.
    • A creature wholly given to brawls and wine.
    Synonyms:
    entirely

Origin of wholely

From whole + -ly.

Questions about wholely

What is wholely the alternative spelling of?
Wholely is the alternative spelling of wholly.

Words near wholely in the dictionary

  1. wholegrain breads
  2. wholegrains
  3. wholehearted
  4. wholeheartedly
  5. wholeheartedness
  6. wholely
  7. wholemeal
  8. wholemeal bread
  9. wholemeal breads
  10. wholemeals
  11. wholemount

Source and license

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