at large

Cultural  

1. A descriptive term for the election of public officials by an entire governmental unit rather than by subdivisions of the unit. For example, a delegate at large does not represent any specific district or locale, but speaks instead for a much wider group of people.

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at large Idioms  

1. Free, unconfined, especially not confined in prison, as in To our distress, the housebreakers were still at large . [1300s]

2. At length, fully; also, as a whole, in general. For example, The chairman talked at large about the company's plans for the coming year , or, as Shakespeare wrote in Love's Labour's Lost (1:1): “So to the laws at large I write my name” (that is, I uphold the laws in general). This usage is somewhat less common. [1400s]

3. Elected to represent an entire group of voters rather than those in a particular district or other segment—for example, alderman at large , representing all the wards of a city instead of just one, or delegate at large to a labor union convention . [Mid-1700s]

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Example Sentences

That’s great for defense stocks and for U.S. manufacturing at large.

From Barron's

It helps that Buckley and Bale are terrific, as is the ensemble at large.

From Los Angeles Times

Investors, analysts and the tech industry at large have been eagerly awaiting the new models, and Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has been asked for updates on multiple recent earnings calls.

From The Wall Street Journal

The distillation attacks — attempts to maliciously extract the intellectual property of a high-performing AI model — come at a pivotal moment for Anthropic and the AI industry at large.

From MarketWatch

“We help about 1,400 families a month and we plucked out who had experience at large financial institutions that we could learn from, and culled records from at least a thousand,” said Walter.

From MarketWatch

Related Words

• able
• clear
• easy
• independent
• loose
• open
• unfettered
• unrestricted