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Yekaterina
what's the difference between "entire" and "whole"?
hi, everyone
what's the difference between "entire" and "whole"?
I have saw their usage a lot of times but still can not understand the diffenence
"whole life" and "entire life" look the same. I often meet the word "entire" with nouns using to express time: entire hour, enire day etc. Is it using for periods of time?
May 4, 2017 4:39 PM
Answers · 4
They are synonyms.
"Whole" is the usual, everyday, spoken word.
"Entire" is more formal or literary. It might also be used for emphasis that you mean 100.0000%. "Entire" also has some specialized uses. In botany, for example, the edge of a leaf is either "serrated" (like a tiny sawtooth) or "entire" (smooth-edged).
It is the usual thing. I checked a dictionary and found what I expected. "whole" is derived from Middle English (and Anglo-Saxon), "entire" from Old French (and thus Latin). Because of the history of England, and its conquest by the French-speaking Normans in 1066, English has almost a double core vocabulary. There are many such pairs of near-synonyms, in which the Anglo-Saxon word is less formal and the French or Latin-derived word is more formal.
May 4, 2017
I think they mean the same thing and are interchangeable. But maybe "entire" can maybe imply that it is something very big, for example "the whole pie" or "the entire country"
May 4, 2017
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Yekaterina
Language Skills
English, Russian
Learning Language
English
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