Full vs Quite - What's the difference?
full | quite |
Containing the maximum possible amount of that which can fit in the space available.
*
, title= Complete; with nothing omitted.
* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author=
, magazine=(American Scientist), title= Total, entire.
(informal) Having eaten to satisfaction, having a "full" stomach; replete.
Of a garment, of a size that is ample, wide, or having ample folds or pleats to be comfortable.
Having depth and body; rich.
(obsolete) Having the mind filled with ideas; stocked with knowledge; stored with information.
* Francis Bacon
Having the attention, thoughts, etc., absorbed in any matter, and the feelings more or less excited by it.
* John Locke
Filled with emotions.
* Lowell
(obsolete) Impregnated; made pregnant.
* Dryden
(lb) Quite; thoroughly; completely; exactly; entirely.
*(William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
*:master of a full poor cell
*(Joseph Addison) (1672-1719)
*:full in the centre of the sacred wood
*1819 , (John Keats), Otho the Great , Act IV, Scene I, verse 112
*:You know full well what makes me look so pale.
*(rfdate) (Dante Gabriel Rosetti), William Blake , lines 9-12
*:This cupboard/ this other one, / His true wife's charge, full oft to their abode / Yielded for daily bread the martyr's stone,
*1874 , , (The City of Dreadful Night) , IX
*:It is full strange to him who hears and feels, / When wandering there in some deserted street, / The booming and the jar of ponderous wheels,
*
*:Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes..
Utmost measure or extent; highest state or degree; the state, position, or moment of fullness; fill.
* Shakespeare
* Dryden
* 1911 , Berthold Auerbach, Bayard Taylor, The villa on the Rhine :
* 2008 , Jay Cassell, The Gigantic Book Of Hunting Stories :
* 2010 , C. E. Morgan, All the Living: A Novel :
(of the moon) The phase of the moon when it is entire face is illuminated, full moon.
* 1765 , Francis Bacon, The works of Francis Bacon :
* 1808 , (editor), Works , Volume VII: Practical Works, Revised edition,
(label) an aerialist maneuver consisting of a backflip in conjunction and simultaneous with a complete twist
(of the moon) To become full or wholly illuminated.
* 1888 September 20, "
* 1905 , , The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation , ch. 4:
* 1918 , , The Story Of Waitstill Baxter , ch. 29:
(lb) To the greatest extent or degree; completely, entirely.
#With verbs, especially past participles.
#*, Book I:
#*:Thus when they had the witch disrobed quight , / And all her filthy feature open showne, / They let her goe at will, and wander wayes vnknowne.
#*2005 , Adrian Searle, The Guardian , 4 October:
#*:Nobuyoshi Araki has been called a monster, a pornographer and a genius - and the photographer quite agrees.
#With prepositional phrases and spatial adverbs.
#*1891 , (Thomas Nelson Page), On Newfound River :
#*:Margaret passed quite through the pines, and reached the opening beyond which was what was once the yard, but was now, except for a strip of flower-border and turf which showed care, simply a tangle of bushes and briars.
#*2010 , Joanna Briscoe, The Guardian , 30 October:
#*:Religion and parochial etiquette are probed to reveal unhealthy, and sometimes shockingly violent, internal desires quite at odds with the surface life of a town in which tolerance is preached.
#With predicative adjectives.
#*1914 , (Edgar Rice Burroughs), (The Son of Tarzan) :
#*:El Adrea was quite dead. No more will he slink silently upon his unsuspecting prey.
#*:
#*:In Lejeuneaceae vegetative branches normally originate from the basiscopic basal portion of a lateral segment half, as in the Radulaceae, and the associated leaves, therefore, are quite unmodified.
#With attributive adjectives, following an (especially indefinite) article; chiefly as expressing contrast, difference etc.
#*2003 , (Richard Dawkins), A Devil's Chaplain :
#*:When I warned him that his words might be offensive to identical twins, he said that identical twins were a quite different case.
#*2011 , Peter Preston, The Observer , 18 September:
#*:Create a new, quite separate, private company – say Murdoch Newspaper Holdings – and give it all, or most of, the papers that News Corp owns.
#Preceding nouns introduced by the indefinite article. Chiefly in negative constructions.
#*1791 , (James Boswell), (Life of Samuel Johnson) :
#*:I ventured to hint that he was not quite a fair judge, as Churchill had attacked him violently.
#*1920 , (John Galsworthy), (In Chancery) :
#*:And with a prolonged sound, not quite' a sniff and not ' quite a snort, he trod on Euphemia's toe, and went out, leaving a sensation and a faint scent of barley?sugar behind him.
#With adverbs of manner.
#*2009 , John F. Schmutz, The Battle of the Crater: A complete history :
#*:However, the proceedings were quite carefully orchestrated to produce what seemed to be a predetermined outcome.
#*2011 , Bob Burgess, The Guardian , 18 October:
#*:Higher education institutions in the UK are, quite rightly, largely autonomous.
(lb) In a fully justified sense; truly, perfectly, actually.
#Coming before the indefinite article and an attributive adjective. (Now largely merged with moderative senses, below.)
#*1898 , (Charles Gavrice), Nell of Shorne Mills :
#*:"My little plot has been rather successful, after all, hasn't it?" "Quite a perfect success," said Drake.
#*2001 , Paul Brown, The Guardian , 7 February:
#*:While the government claims to lead the world with its plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the figures tell quite a different story.
#With plain adjectives, past participles, and adverbs.
#*
#*:“My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”
#*2010 , Dave Hill, The Guardian , 5 November:
#*:London Underground is quite unique in how many front line staff it has, as anyone who has travelled on the Paris Metro or New York Subway will testify.
#Coming before the definite article and an attributive superlative.
#*1910 , ‘(Saki)’, "The Soul of Laploshka", Reginald in Russia :
#*:Laploshka was one of the meanest men I have ever met, and quite one of the most entertaining.
#*1923 , "The New Pictures", Time , 8 October:
#*:Scaramouche has already been greeted as the finest French Revolution yet brought to the screen-and even if you are a little weary of seeing a strongly American band of sans-culottes demolish a pasteboard Paris, you should not miss Scaramouche, for it is quite the best thing Rex Ingram has done since The Four Horsemen.
#Before a noun preceded by an indefinite article; now often with ironic implications that the noun in question is particularly noteworthy or remarkable.
#*1830 , Senate debate, 15 April:
#*:To debauch the Indians with rum and cheat them of their land was quite a Government affair, and not at all criminal; but to use rum to cheat them of their peltry, was an abomination in the sight of the law.
#*2011 , Gilbert Morris, The Crossing :
#*:“Looks like you and Clay had quite a party,” she said with a glimmer in her dark blue eyes.
#Before a noun preceded by the definite article.
#*1871 , (Anthony Trollope), (The Eustace Diamonds) :
#*:It is quite the proper thing for a lady to be on intimate, and even on affectionate, terms with her favourite clergyman, and Lizzie certainly had intercourse with no clergyman who was a greater favourite with her than Mr. Emilius.
#*2006 , Sherman Alexie, "When the story stolen is your own", Time , 6 February:
#*:His memoir features a child named Tommy Nothing Fancy who suffers from and dies of a seizure disorder. Quite the coincidence, don't you think?
#
To a moderate extent or degree; somewhat, rather.
As an adjective full
is foul, rotten.As a verb quite is
.full
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) full, from (etyl) . Germanic cognates include West Frisian fol, Low German vull, Dutch vol, German voll, Danish fuld, and Swedish and Norwegian .Adjective
(er)Mr. Pratt's Patients, chapter=1 , passage='Twas early June, the new grass was flourishing everywheres, the posies in the yard—peonies and such—in full bloom, the sun was shining, and the water of the bay was blue, with light green streaks where the shoal showed.}}
Catherine Clabby
Focus on Everything, passage=Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus.
- a full singing voice
- Reading maketh a full man.
- She's full of her latest project.
- Everyone is full of the miracles done by cold baths on decayed and weak constitutions.
- The heart is so full that a drop overfills it.
- Ilia, the fair, full of Mars.
Synonyms
* (containing the maximum possible amount) abounding, brimful, bursting, chock-a-block, chock-full, full up, full to bursting, full to overflowing, jam full, jammed, jam-packed, laden, loaded, overflowing, packed, rammed, stuffed * (complete) complete, thorough * (total) entire, total * glutted, gorged, sated, satiate, satiated, satisfied, stuffed * (of a garment) baggy, big, large, loose, outsized, oversized, voluminousAntonyms
* (containing the maximum possible amount) empty * (complete) incomplete * (total) partial * empty, hungry, starving * (of a garment) close-fitting, small, tight, tight-fittingDerived terms
* full as a goog * full as a tick * full beam * fullblood, full-blood, full blood * full-blown * full-bodied * full-dress * full house * fully * full marks * full moon * full name * fullness * fullscale * full stop * to the fullAdverb
(-)Derived terms
* full wellEtymology 2
From (etyl) fulle, fylle, fille, from (etyl) fyllu, . More at fill.Noun
(en noun)- The swan's-down feather, / That stands upon the swell at full of tide.
- Sicilian tortures and the brazen bull, / Are emblems, rather than express the full / Of what he feels.
- I was fed to the full .
- he had tasted their food, and found it so palatable that he had eaten his full before he knew it.
- Early next morning we were over at the elk carcass, and, as we expected, found that the bear had eaten his full at it during the night.
- When he had eaten his full , they set to work again.
- It is like, that the brain of man waxeth moister and fuller upon the full of the moon: [...]
page 219,
- This earthly moon, the Church, hath her fulls and wanings, and sometimes her eclipses, while the shadow of this sinful mass hides her beauty from the world.
Derived terms
* at full, at the full * in full * to the full (freestyle skiing) * double full * lay-full * full-full * full-double full * double full-full * lay-full-full * full-full-full * lay-double full-full * full-double full-fullVerb
(en verb)The Harvest Moon," New York Times (retrieved 10 April 2013):
- The September moon fulls on the 20th at 24 minutes past midnight, and is called the harvest moon.
- "By the black cave of Atropos, when the moon fulls , keep thy tryst!"
- "The moon fulls to-night, don't it?"
