Dictionary

in the main

Prepositional phrase

Principally; on the whole; for the most part.
- 1814 July, [Jane Austen], chapter I, in Mansfield Park: A Novel. In Three Volumes, volume I, London: Printed for T[homas] Egerton, […], OCLC 39810224 ↗, page 8 ↗:
  {...}} I entirely agree with you in the main as to the propriety of doing everything one could by way of providing for a child one had in a manner taken into one's own hands; {{...}
- 1869 August, Charles Dickens, "On Mr. Fechter's Acting", The Atlantic Monthly:
  Mr. Fechter has been in the main more accustomed to speak French than to speak English.
- 1914, James Joyce, "The Dead" in Dubliners:
  "A new generation is growing up in our midst . . . and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere."
- 2011 Feb. 28, John Cloud, "[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2050027,00.html Sex Addiction: A Disease or a Convenient Excuse?]," Time (retrieved 13 August 2013):
  Bill Clinton's philandering was regarded as a moral failing or a joke — but not, in the main, as an illness.

Synonyms

all in all, mainly, mostly, usually; see also Thesaurus:mostly

This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003