all right
- adverb
- /ɔl raɪt/
- Is the car functioning all right?
- turn out all right
And you do it all right here from your phone.
- And you do it all right here from your phone.
- My daughter, she's she's doing all right, you know, again, difficult to talk about.
Examples
-
Seems like you walked away all right.
-
Will you see that she gets there all right?
-
It's like we'll be all right for forever this way.
-
Hey, is everything all right between you and my daughter?
-
Seems to be all right now.
-
It's going to be all right.
-
But Mr. Kinkaid said it would be all right.
-
"Is it all right if we come on in?" "It's all right," Ken smiled at Helen.
Fiction book (1990) -
The shop in London's doing all right, the one in Brighton's almost breaking even.
-
Call me and let me know you got home all right, okay?
Synonyms
In a good or skillful way
In good enough condition so no one needs to worry
In a fairly good way
Good enough for a particular use or standard
Everything is fine with no problems or worries
To a fair degree but not very much
In a way that is good enough for the task
Good enough to meet a need but not very good
In a proper and respectful way
In a way that is good enough but not very good
Correct enough to be useful
Good enough to do the job but not very good
In a way that is good enough but not very good
In perfect condition and ready to use
In a way that is good enough but not very good
Antonyms
How Well
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'satisfactory/acceptable' is transparently derived from combining 'all' as an intensifier (completely/entirely) with 'right' meaning correct or okay, yielding the sense 'completely right' → 'fine/acceptable'. This intensifier + adjective compositional pattern is common and cross‑linguistically familiar, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE’s meaning.
Etymology
All right in the sense 'in a good enough way' comes from the idea that all plus right means things are 'good enough'. So if something goes 'all right', it means it happened in an acceptable way.