every last
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
everything without exception
Literally: every last item
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Carefully he scraped every last vestige of ice - cream from his bowl, then stood up.
It would be no bad thing if a more subdued housing market made Britons less obsessive about investing every last penny in their homes in the quest for easy returns.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “every last” mean?
everything without exception Literally: every last item
Is “every last” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.