END-ALL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of End-all

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noun

End-all n.

Complete termination. (R.) "That but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here."

The primary or only purpose or goal; as, winning office is the be-all and end-all of a politician's life.

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Etymology of 'End-all'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"End-all" Quotes from Famous Books

... head again, slowly but positively. "'Tis curious to me," he said, "how you keep harkin' back to that bit o' money you lost. But 'tis the same, I've heard, with all you rich fellows. Money's the be-all and end-all with 'ee." ...

— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... last urged as determining the value of the writer we might indeed say that the critic offends by exalting a subordinate distinction to the first place. But it is not so urged, nor is there anything to indicate that Mr. Arnold makes perfection of literary execution the be-all and end-all of excellence in literature; indeed one does not see that he at all exaggerates its importance. Those whom he mentions as great writers were for the most part second-rate men—second-rate men that is as measured by the standard of the ages; and it does not appear that he thinks of them otherwise ...

— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... that it is not to be wondered at that there is a tendency sometimes to swing to the other extreme, and to give it less than its fair share in the affairs of men. In British fiction nine books out of ten have held up love and marriage as the be-all and end-all of life. Yet we know, in actual practice, that this may not be so. In the career of the average man his marriage is an incident, and a momentous incident; but it is only one of several. He is swayed by many strong ...

— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... man indulged. He too had an office in the Church of God, and he would magnify that office. He could not bear that there should be no further outcome of his labour; that the burying of the dead out of sight should be "the be-all and the end-all." He was God's vicar, the gardener in God's Acre, as the Germans call the churchyard. When all others had forsaken the dead, he remained their friend, caring for what little comfort yet remained possible to ...

— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

Words linked to "End-all" : be-all and end-all, end