English · Idiom Candidate

to all intents and purposes

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Essentially or practically, but not officially

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Về cơ bản hoặc thực tế, nhưng không chính thức

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: to all intentions and purposes

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Figure 6.10 depicts a theory of labour market adjustment which is, to all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from that of A. C. Pigou and his classical contemporaries.

Making matters worse, the two countries have, to all intents and purposes, broken off both unofficial and - with scarcely an exception - official dialogue.

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 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “to all intents and purposes” mean?

Essentially or practically, but not officially Literally: to all intentions and purposes

Is “to all intents and purposes” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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