Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- All at a gulp; altogether; all at once: as, he swallowed it holus-bolus.
- noun The whole; all, taken collectively: as, he drove out the holus-bolus of them.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adverb All together; entirely; without
modification .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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I don't buy the refutations of the "Engage" crowd holus-bolus, but I do believe that we need to take considerable care in our political uses of analogies.
Archive 2009-03-01 2009
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Tim Jones is right: as he points out, even if you discount the CRU findings holus-bolus, the same results have been replicated elsewhere.
Archive 2009-11-01 2009
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Tim Jones is right: as he points out, even if you discount the CRU findings holus-bolus, the same results have been replicated elsewhere.
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The downstairs foyer was sheathed in multicolored marble and adorned with lush palms in handmade marble pots; a closer inspection revealed that the palms could be lifted out holus-bolus in smaller, plastic pots.
TOO MANY MURDERS Colleen McCullough 2009
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I don't buy the refutations of the "Engage" crowd holus-bolus, but I do believe that we need to take considerable care in our political uses of analogies.
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There was a good deal of "enmeshing" there, too, as the majority Black population served as an endless supply of cheap labour for the white elite, and was too populous in any case to be banished holus-bolus to the bantustans.
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For all the woolly sort of anti-Americanism afoot within the Canadian liberal-left, it is also true, and not the tiniest bit pathetic, that to formulate a position on the Afghanistan question the Canadian left has in the main simply adopted holus-bolus the American counterculture polemics on Iraq, and changed some names.
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There was a good deal of "enmeshing" there, too, as the majority Black population served as an endless supply of cheap labour for the white elite, and was too populous in any case to be banished holus-bolus to the bantustans.
Archive 2008-05-01 2008
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Maybe the great Queen had moved herself holus-bolus into his heart because she at least could find merit in him; she at least thought him powerful and worth cultivating.
Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007
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The whole point of any negotiations is gradually to split the Taliban apart if that can be done, not to accept the old gang back holus-bolus.
oroboros commented on the word holus-bolus
All together, unmodified, as in "to accept a story holus-bolus".
November 26, 2007
qms commented on the word holus-bolus
The magician aims to control us.
He first will charm and cajole us
And then shift our focus
By some hocus-pocus
So we buy the trick holus-bolus.
June 20, 2014
qms commented on the word holus-bolus
The Word of the Day notification includes this persuasive bit of speculation:
This term may be a mock-latinization of 'whole bolus,' where 'bolus' is 'a round mass' of something, or of an assumed Greek 'whole lump.'
June 20, 2014