warts and all

Idioms

Including all blemishes, faults, and shortcomings, as in Rather unwisely, they decided to buy the house, warts and all. This expression supposedly alludes to Oliver Cromwell's instruction to portrait painter Sir Peter Lely to “remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.” [First half of 1600s]

Example Sentences

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warts and all

Our cities remain rich places, warts and all.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 16, 2025

Having spent nearly 50 years telling America’s stories, warts and all, Ken Burns knows better than to traffic in the reassurance business.

From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2025

It is my job to try to bring you as clear a sense as I can of what is really going on at the heart of government, warts and all.

From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2024

Some see Crowther as an unfairly maligned man of his time, and his effigy as an important part of the state’s history, warts and all.

From BBC ● Sep. 14, 2024

Cromwell's wife and daughters would probably prefer to have him painted wartless, but posterity wants him warts and all.

From The Land of Contrasts A Briton's View of His American Kin by James F. (James Fullarton) Muirhead

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

warts and all

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