all in all

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

all in all (not comparable)

1. (modal, set phrase) Generally, all things considered

   All in all, it's not a bad little restaurant.

2. Altogether

   There were twenty absentees all in all.

• (generally): for the most part, mostly, on the whole, altogether, in all, summa summarum; see also Thesaurus:mostly

all in all (uncountable)

1. Everything that matters; the only thing of importance.
   • 1822, William Goode, Essays on all the scriptural names and titles of Christ, page 181:

     […] to realize, by constant faith, the all-sufficiency of his redeeming power and love — to make him all his salvation and all his desire, the Alpha and Omega of all his hope, his all in all.

   • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:

     You saw us all in happier days before he married me. I was all in all then to him; or would he have given up his fortune, his family, as he nobly did to make me happy?

   • 1828, Constantine Henry Phipps Marquess of Normanby, Yes and No: a Tale of the Day, page 12:

     Her mother had been all in all to her: she had never seemed to have any separate existence from that of her child.