Recherche parmi différents professeurs en Anglais…
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?
4 mai 2017 16:39
Réponses · 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.
4 mai 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"
4 mai 2017
Vous n'avez pas encore trouvé vos réponses ?
Écrivez vos questions et profitez de l'aide des locuteurs natifs !
Yekaterina
Compétences linguistiques
Anglais, Russe
Langue étudiée
Anglais
Articles qui pourraient te plaire

Same Word, Different Meaning: American, British, and South African English
25 j'aime · 17 Commentaires

How to Sound Confident in English (Even When You’re Nervous)
19 j'aime · 13 Commentaires

Marketing Vocabulary and Phrases for Business English Learners
16 j'aime · 6 Commentaires
Plus d'articles
