Skip to main content
PlainSpell

whole

UK /həʊl/adjective, adverb, noun

whole is spelled W-H-O-L-E. The wrong spelling people search most is hwole: about 10 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 385 of all searches for the word. Whole is an adjective meaning “Entire, undivided”.

How many letters and syllables are in whole?

Letters5: W-H-O-L-E
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing288 times per million words; the 329th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, hwole, about 10 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Pairs people search
Sounds like
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How do you spell whole?

Whole is spelled W-H-O-L-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 379 of the searches for whole in either form.

wholethe right spelling3,780 searches a month
hwolew and h swapped10 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is whole?

Whole appears 288 times per million words in written English, the 329th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce whole?

  • UK /həʊl/
  • UK [hɜʊ̯ɫ]
  • UK [hɒʊ̯ɫ]

Whole has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-whole.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with whole

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

hole vs whole1,300 G

Sounds like: hole (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).

Also written: hole.

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with whole?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as whole from its last stressed vowel (/əʊl/, British pronunciation):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: howel.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of whole

  • wholer comparative
  • more whole comparative
  • wholest superlative
  • most whole superlative
  • wholes plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does whole mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

adjective

  1. 1

    Entire, undivided.

    I ate a whole fish.

  2. 2

    Used as an intensifier.

    I brought a whole lot of balloons for the party. She ate a whole bunch of french fries.

  3. 3

    Sound, uninjured, healthy.

    He is of whole mind, but the same cannot be said about his physical state.

  4. 4

    From which none of its constituents has been removed.

    whole wheat; whole milk

  5. 5

    As yet unworked.

adverb

  1. 1

    colloquialIn entirety; entirely; wholly.

    I ate a fish whole!

noun

  1. 1

    Something complete, without any parts missing.

    This variety of fascinating details didn't fall together into an enjoyable, coherent whole.

  2. 2

    An entirety.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Whole in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchentier, tout (entire), ensemble, totalité (something complete)
Germanganz (entire), Ganze (something complete), Voll- (food with no constituents removed)
Portugueseinteiro (entire), todo (something complete), integral (food with no constituents removed)
Spanishentero (entire), totalidad (something complete), integral (food with no constituents removed)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does whole come from?

From Middle English whol, hol, hole (“healthy, unhurt, whole”), from Old English hāl (“healthy, safe”), from Proto-West Germanic *hail, from Proto-Germanic *hailaz (“whole, safe, sound”), from Proto-Indo-European *kéh₂ilos (“healthy, whole”). The spelling with wh-, attested since ca. 1400, represents an excrescent /w/, which developed in words with initial /(h)ɔː/, /(h)oː/ in southwestern dialects of Middle English.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after whole