Almost

//ˈɔː(l)məs// adv, noun, slang

adv, noun, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Something or someone that doesn't quite make it. informal

    "In all the submissions, they found four papers that were clearly worth publishing and another dozen almosts."

Adverb
  1. 1
    Very close to, but not quite. not-comparable

    "Almost all people went there."

  2. 2
    Up to, except for a negligible set (where negligible is not universally but contextually defined). not-comparable

    "almost all"

  3. 3
    Up to, except for a negligible set (where negligible is not universally but contextually defined).; Up to a null set; except for a set of measure 0. not-comparable

    "almost everywhere"

Adverb
  1. 1
    (of actions or states) slightly short of or not quite accomplished; all but wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
virtuallynearlygive or takeaboutaboutall but

Example

More examples

"It almost scared me not to see you online for a whole day."

Etymology

From Middle English almost, from Old English eallmǣst (“nearly all, almost, for the most part”), equivalent to al- (“all”) + most.

Related phrases

almost allalmost doesn't countalmost everywherealmost fall of one's chairalmost fall off one's chairalmost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenadesalmost primealmost split sequencealmost standards modealmost surelyclose tonearing completion

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.