en masse

American  

[ahn mas, en, ahn mas] / ɑn ˈmæs, ɛn, ɑ̃ ˈmas /

adverb

1. in a mass; all together; as a group.

   The people rushed to the gate en masse.

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en masse British  

/ ɑ̃ mas /

adverb

1. in a group, body, or mass; as a whole; all together

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en masse Cultural  

1. A French phrase meaning “in a large body”: “The protesters left en masse for the White House.”

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en masse Idioms  

1. In one group or body; all together. For example, The activists marched en masse to the capitol. This French term, with exactly the same meaning, was adopted into English about 1800.

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Etymology

Origin of en masse

Borrowed into English from French around 1795–1805

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

en masse

As the lights suddenly turned off across Havana, residents who were sat outside to get some respite from the summer heat audibly groaned en masse.

From Barron's ● Aug. 3, 2026

Even more egregious is the case of AI companies buying and destroying rare books en masse in the process of scanning them for data.

From Salon ● Jul. 28, 2026

The company had designed an Ascend AI chip that, on paper, matched Nvidia’s top chip at the time, but it never got to produce the chip en masse.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

So is the proud Iranian diaspora showing up en masse to mostly support Team Melli twice, in draws with New Zealand and Belgium.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 11, 2026

But as a high-end name is adopted en masse, high-end parents begin to abandon it.

From "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" by Steven D. Levitt

Related Words

• altogether