• (RP) IPA: /ˈsʌmwɒt/
• (America) IPA: /ˈsʌmwʌt/

somewhat (not comparable)

1. (degree) To a limited extent or degree.

   The crowd was somewhat larger than expected, perhaps due to the good weather.

   The decision to shave or not is a somewhat personal one.

• French: assez, quelque peu
• German: etwas, einigermaßen
• Portuguese: um tanto, meio
• Russian: не́сколько
• Spanish: algo, un poco, de algún modo, de alguna manera, en cierto modo

1. (archaic) Something.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.12:

     Proceeding to the midst he stil did stand, / As if in minde he somewhat had to say […].

   • But this text and theme I am upon, relates to somewhat far higher and greater, than all the beholdings of his glory that ever any saint on earth received.

somewhat

1. More or less; a certain quantity or degree; a part, more or less; something.

   • These salts have somewhat of a nitrous taste.

   • Somewhat of his good sense will suffer, in this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will be lost.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. In Six Volumes, volume (please specify ), London: Printed by A[ndrew] Millar, […], OCLC 928184292 ↗:

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     To these ladies a man often recommends himself while he is commending another woman; and, while he is expressing ardour and generous sentiments for his mistress, they are considering what a charming lover this man would make to them, who can feel all this tenderness for an inferior degree of merit. Of this, strange as it may seem, I have seen many instances besides Mrs Fitzpatrick, to whom all this really happened, and who now began to feel a somewhat for Mr Jones, the symptoms of which she much sooner understood than poor Sophia had formerly done.

   • 1885, Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Night 558:

     Then they set somewhat of food before me, whereof I ate my fill, and gave me somewhat of clothes wherewith I clad myself anew and covered my nakedness; after which they took me up into the ship, […]

2. A person or thing of importance; a somebody.

   • Pity that the researchful notary has not either told us in what century, and of what history, he was a writer, or been simply content to depose, that Lollius, if a writer of that name existed at all, was a somewhat somewhere.

   • ?, Alfred Tennyson, St. Simeon Stylites

     Here come those that worship me? Ha! ha! / They think that I am somewhat.