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What is "all-to"

The Collaborative International Dictionary
All-to

All \All\, adv.

  1. Wholly; completely; altogether; entirely; quite; very; as, all bedewed; my friend is all for amusement. ``And cheeks all pale.''
    --Byron.

    Note: In the ancient phrases, all too dear, all too much, all so long, etc., this word retains its appropriate sense or becomes intensive.

  2. Even; just. (Often a mere intensive adjunct.) [Obs. or Poet.] All as his straying flock he fed. --Spenser. A damsel lay deploring All on a rock reclined. --Gay. All to, or All-to. In such phrases as ``all to rent,'' ``all to break,'' ``all-to frozen,'' etc., which are of frequent occurrence in our old authors, the all and the to have commonly been regarded as forming a compound adverb, equivalent in meaning to entirely, completely, altogether. But the sense of entireness lies wholly in the word all (as it does in ``all forlorn,'' and similar expressions), and the to properly belongs to the following word, being a kind of intensive prefix (orig. meaning asunder and answering to the LG. ter-, HG. zer-). It is frequently to be met with in old books, used without the all. Thus Wyclif says, ``The vail of the temple was to rent:'' and of Judas, ``He was hanged and to-burst the middle:'' i. e., burst in two, or asunder. All along. See under Along. All and some, individually and collectively, one and all. [Obs.] ``Displeased all and some.'' --Fairfax. All but.

    1. Scarcely; not even. [Obs.]
      --Shak.

    2. Almost; nearly. ``The fine arts were all but proscribed.''
      --Macaulay.

      All hollow, entirely, completely; as, to beat any one all hollow. [Low]

      All one, the same thing in effect; that is, wholly the same thing.

      All over, over the whole extent; thoroughly; wholly; as, she is her mother all over. [Colloq.]

      All the better, wholly the better; that is, better by the whole difference.

      All the same, nevertheless. ``There they [certain phenomena] remain rooted all the same, whether we recognize them or not.''
      --J. C. Shairp. ``But Rugby is a very nice place all the same.''
      --T. Arnold. -- See also under All, n.

Usage examples of "all-to".

And then Janice is beside her and Janice is asking her what her all-time favorite Simon and Garfunkel song is and soon they are deep in a discussion of 'Homeward Bound' and 'I Am a Rock', the one that goes 'If I'd never loved, I never would have cried.

He looked up at alien stars, swollen things that blinked on and off like the Christmas lights they strung over small-town Main Streets every year on the day after Thanksgiving.

The opposite end of the room was blocked off by a massive wooden counter and a wall-to-wall slab of milky Lucite layered with wire mesh.

You're not some small-time cop anymore, putting people in jail when they do things the government doesn't like.

Outside the windows he saw a New England small-town street under a heavy gray sky.

They inspected the bodies on the seabed, then lifted them-shackles and all-to the surface, quick-froze them, and whipped them back to shore on the institute’s hovercraft for a real inspection.