at large
Cultural-
Free, unconfined, especially not confined in prison, as in To our distress, the housebreakers were still at large . [1300s]
-
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]
-
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]
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Anderson was released on Monday from Maghaberry Prison to attend the funeral but absconded and remains at large.
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2026
As a result, macroeconomic headwinds such as rising interest rates will become a bigger factor to the long-term success of the AI trade at large, according to Rinehart.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 14, 2026
But for the sake of filmgoing at large, I’d be more thrilled to spot another under-the-radar “Obsession.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2026
While the Supreme Court later sentenced him to prison, he remains at large.
From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026
While physicists in the middle decades of the twentieth-century were looking perplexedly into the world of the very small, astronomers were finding no less arresting an incompleteness of understanding in the universe at large.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
