all told
9
4.2
- idiom
:
en total
- I think, all told, I banked over $650 over the course of the study.
- the total number
Examples
-
Got us about $200 all told.
-
Yes, I saw her for less than ten minutes, all told.
-
Maybe eight, nine all told.
-
- That makes three, all told.
-
All told, we lost 30 to 40 head.
-
All told, this town gave 62... of its young men to the war.
-
All told, Coggins owed almost three quarters of a million dollars to over one hundred individuals.
Academic text (2013) -
All told, these cases comprise a universe of more than seventy opinions.
Academic text (2007) -
All told, 117 people were charged with conspiracy: from the distributor to the projectionist.
-
They had a great vacation, visiting three countries and trying new foods, all told.
Synonyms
806
1.0
The total when you add everything together
616
3.1
Including all parts to give a general view
189
3.0
In total when you add everything
76
3.2
A way to say you have thought about everything
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
all + told
The element 'all' signals totality, so learners may suspect the phrase relates to an overall amount, but 'told' (past of 'tell') does not transparently mean 'counted' or 'included' in modern usage and the construction is somewhat idiomatic/archaic. A B1 learner who knows the words might guess the general sense of totality but would likely not derive the precise meaning 'in total' without prior exposure.
Etymology
All told may come from the idea of someone counting and then saying how many there are. Imagine a person who has counted everyone and says all are told, meaning they have been counted, so the phrase now means 'in total' or 'when everything is included'.