as in almost
very close to but not completely
dinner is all but on the table, so don't go anywhere
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for all but
Adverb
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States, and now nonstate actors, have been engaging in wars of various kinds almost constantly since World War II.—
Elizabeth D. Samet,
Foreign Affairs,
29 Oct. 2025 -
This is one of the most popular portable heated blankets on Amazon, with almost 500 perfect ratings.—
Olivia Young,
Travel + Leisure,
29 Oct. 2025
Adverb
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Besides being one of the best ways to stay warm, puffer jackets are also unbelievably packable, much like this Eddie Bauer down jacket that has insulation for chilly days but can be folded or rolled to practically half its size.—
Kelsey Glennon,
Travel + Leisure,
29 Oct. 2025
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The key to detecting them, then, wasn’t to simply build a detector sensitive enough to see each individual neutrino; that would be a practically impossible task.—
Big Think,
Big Think,
28 Oct. 2025
Adverb
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Gehl and his staff still have had to intervene when kids have misbehaved over the course of the brewery's nearly decade in business.—
Jordyn Noennig,
jsonline.com,
27 Oct. 2025
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In Michigan, where nearly 13% of households receive SNAP benefits, news of the pause had families, from Detroit to Interlochen, preparing to go to food pantries and worried about what's to come.—
Nushrat Rahman,
Freep.com,
27 Oct. 2025
Adverb
-
The display area matches the size of a human pupil and achieves a resolution beyond 25,000 pixels per inch (ppi), which is about 150 times denser than most smartphone screens.—
Aamir Khollam,
Interesting Engineering,
24 Oct. 2025
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South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated in September that about 2,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed in the fighting.—
Reuters,
NBC news,
24 Oct. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“All but.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/all%20but. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
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