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Synonyms

all but

Idioms  

  1. Almost, nearly, as in I've all but finished the book. This expression was used by Andrew Marvell in “Thoughts in a Garden”: “Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude.” [Late 1500s]

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.

Rothman all but declared the armistice a failure, urging Vice President J.D.

From Slate • Apr. 10, 2026

The stock is up 20% so far in 2026, and remains very popular among analysts with fifty or so contributing recommendations and forecasts to FactSet, and all but one recommending either overweight or buy.

From MarketWatch • Apr. 10, 2026

On this night, the mercenaries prevailed, in a pummeling so relentless and a silencing so rapid that a three-peat appeared all but inevitable: Dodgers 14, Blue Jays 2.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 7, 2026

“AI models have reached a level of coding capability where they can surpass all but the most skilled humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities,” Anthropic said.

From Barron's • Apr. 7, 2026

My eyes all but popped out of my head when I saw that I had caught two little monkeys in my net.

From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls

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.