Alls

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Everything taken together or in total, used to express the entirety of something
2. The whole of something or all that exists within a particular scope or situation
3. Everything considered as a single complete unit or aggregate

Etymology: "Alls" is the plural form of "all," and the plural is rare enough that it survives mainly in set phrases and dialect. Its base word, "all," reaches back through Old English and the wider Germanic family: it has close cognates across Scots, Frisian, Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish and Icelandic, all meaning roughly "all," and the same root turns up in Gothic as "alls." Its Celtic cousins, such as Welsh "holl" and Irish "uile," show the same sense, though whether these share a common ancestor with the Germanic forms is a matter of ongoing discussion. The plural's most striking use is dialectal: "all gone" is an old regional way of saying something has vanished entirely. In the more familiar "who all" or "where all," the word adds a sense of "everyone" or "everywhere" after a question word, a construction that parallels the German "alles."