somewhat

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English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

  • (British, dialectal) summat (and variants listed there)

Etymology[edit]

some +‎ what

Pronunciation[edit]

Adverb[edit]

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.
    • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 2, in The Celebrity:
      I had occasion […] to make a somewhat long business trip to Chicago, and on my return […] I found Farrar awaiting me in the railway station. He smiled his wonted fraction by way of greeting, […], and finally leading me to his buggy, turned and drove out of town. I was completely mystified at such an unusual proceeding.

Translations[edit]

See also[edit]

Pronoun[edit]

somewhat

  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 […].
    • Robert Trail
      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.
    • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
      Mr Jones had somewhat about him, which, though I think writers are not thoroughly agreed in its name, doth certainly inhabit some human breasts […]
    • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
      Not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's favourites sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out.

Translations[edit]

something — see something

Noun[edit]

somewhat (countable and uncountable, plural somewhats)

  1. More or less; a certain quantity or degree; a part, more or less; something.
    • Grew
      These salts have somewhat of a nitrous taste.
    • Dryden
      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 |volume=I to VI), London: Printed by A[ndrew] Millar, […], OCLC 928184292:
      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.
  2. A person or thing of importance; a somebody.
    • Tennyson
      Here come those that worship me. / They think that I am somewhat.
    • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      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.
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