Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
all-purpose \all-purpose\ adj. 1. not limited in use or function.
Syn: general-purpose.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. for all purposes; general-purpose
WordNet
adj. not limited in use or function [syn: general-purpose]
Wikipedia
All-purpose may refer to:
- All-purpose cleaner, such as hard-surface cleaner
- All-purpose flour
- All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment (ALICE), United States Army standard system of load-carrying equipment
- All-purpose programming language, such as BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) and Perl
- All-purpose road, in the United Kingdom, any road that is not a special road
- All-purpose room, such as a family room or living room
- All-purpose yardage, in American football
Usage examples of "all-purpose".
Occasionally I had to be taken seriously, but in general I was the absurd chameleon of the species, the ludicrous jester and buffo, the all-purpose fool.
The item for sale there was an all-purpose vibrator, oval in shape, featuring a metal fitting for an electric drill on the end, in which a variety of tools could be inserted: back scratcher, toothbrush, facial sponge, wire brush, shoulder massager, small hammer .
Besides, a field can change so entirely, in even the most traditional disciplines like philology, history, or theology, as to make an all-purpose definition of subject matter almost impossible.
I have found them excellent for eliminating pests up to fifty pounds in weight out to 100 yards on the ranch, however, and from a pistol they are my choice for all-purpose, practical rimfire shooting.
Maybe she was simply a bargirl, a cashier, an all-purpose heft-dispenser .
In a couple of hours, they had dungarees, light wool coats and khaki jackets, new lightweight cotton underwear, two pairs of hiking boots apiece and six pairs of wool socks, bush hats, two new belts, two all-purpose hunting knives and two pocketknives, and two compasses.
They had erected an ellipsoid force field for the protection of the entire group, for the all-purpose vehicles, the cross-country jeeps containing radar and radio installations, the mobile kitchen, the trailer with airtight living quarters, and the small carriage on caterpillar tracks on which their laser beam sender had been mounted.
They assure me of facilities adequate to launch my aeroshell back into orbit when the visit is completed, so there's no need to go auto-mine an asteroid and build an ungainly, all-purpose craft.
It was the sort of all-purpose noise collectors and connoisseurs used when they didn't want to be disturbed in their study of an objet d'art.
Rather, as Caveney says, it is a "general" form, an all-purpose "present tense" that simply doesn't address the question of whether the action denoted is continuative, habitual or momentary.
This is what you might call the all-purpose pentagram - drawn this way it always has a positive influence.
I'd gone to the Edgewater Hotel in my all-purpose dress to eat lunch with Ashley, who'd worn an outfit suit-able for bagging game.
Her crust is a very basic mixture of two cups of all-purpose flour kneaded with two-thirds of a cup of softened butter.
Her crust is a very basic mixture of two cups of all-purpose flour kneaded with two-thirds a cup of softened butter.
The item for sale there was an all-purpose vibrator, oval in shape, featuring a metal fitting for an electric drill on the end, in which a variety of tools could be inserted: back scratcher, toothbrush, facial sponge, wire brush, shoulder massager, small hammer .