11 English Collocations with All ⬇️ - Learn English with Harry 👴

Here you will learn useful English collocations with ALL.

A collocation is a combination of two or more words which frequently occur together. If you study English at an intermediate level, you will soon realise that it’s not enough to study single words.

It’s important to know how words combine with others to form collocations.

⚠️This is particularly important if you want to produce language of the level required to do well in your English proficiency exams.

Harry

Harry is a native English teacher with over 10 years of experience both online and in face-to-face lessons. With his extensive experience in business, he specialises in Business English lessons but happily teaches ESL students with any English learning needs.

This is Harry and welcome back to Harry’s English grammar lessons and helpful tips to get you to be more confident to speak your English. Today, we’re going to talk to you about collocations with ALL.

11 English Collocations with All

So I have 11 collocations with all for you and I’ll talk you through each of them slowly, with some good examples and hopefully, then you’ll be able to understand how exactly we can use them.

So the first one is

all over

So all over means everywhere.

All over the world, there are people starving.

All over the world, there are people who are rich.

So one of the children comes in and they knock over a glass of water and the water goes everywhere.

All over the floor, all over the table, clothes, all over your laptop.

Oh my God, what has happened? It’s all over.

And we can also use ‘all over’ in a slightly different way when we want to put some, statement or some exclamation about something.

Well, the game is finished, it’s all over now.

Meaning that was the very last kick of the game and there’s nothing anybody can do about the result. It’s all over. It’s finished.

Intermediate to Advanced English Marathon

INSANITY: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

What you'll learn:
better understanding of more complex grammar structures
advanced English vocabulary words
British & American slang
perfect your listening skills through practing different accents

This marathon is for you if you're:
stuck at an intermediate English level
tired of confusing explanations
a mature student
shy & introverted

Then we have

all but

And that means almost completely, all but.

I’m all but out of money.

I’ve only a little bit of money in my pocket or in my, in my bank, I need some more.

You’re driving along the road and you’re looking at the little needle on your dashboard and you see that all you’re in the red zone of the petrol or your fuel.

Oh dear, I’m all but out of petrol, I hope I find a petrol station soon so I can fill up my car.

And the next collocation we have is

all too

And this usually means very. We often use it with expressions all too often or all too easy.

He’s been late every day this week. He does it all too often for my liking. We should tell them something or we should give him a warning.

All too easy. It’s all too easy for kids these days. They get anything that they want.

Next one

all-round

All-round means a bit like the first one. We gave you words everywhere or around the world. Yeah. You ask one of the children to clean the house and say:

Okay, look, if you want some pocket money, you’re going to have to work for it. You’re going to have to do some hoovering and mind you, it’s not just where you see, you have to go all-round the house, into the corners.

So the weather in the Canary Islands is warm all year round.

11 English Collocations with All

The next one I have for you is specifically to do with sport and in particular is to do with football.

So we use

one/two/three all

when we’re talking about the result or the score. Somebody says:

– Well, what’s the score of the match?

– It’s one all.

Meaning one goal for one team, one goal for the other team.

What was the final result?

Two all, ah, an even game, equal, everybody got a point.

So two all – two goals for your team, two goals for the other team. So one or two, all three or et cetera. Even when there’s no score in the game, zero, zero or nil all.

book your trial English Lesson

The next collocation is

all told

Meaning to get everything together.

Well, all told that wasn’t such a bad presentation. I mean, it started well, the middle was okay. We’ve got a good lot of questions at the end.

And the next one is

know it all

Well, this is quite common and often we use it with somebody when we get a little bit annoyed with them and say:

Oh, you know it all. Yeah, you think you know it all.

Or your children, 16 and 17-year-olds. 16 or 17-year-olds, they know it all, don’t they?

Or indeed when you want to give somebody a little bit of a slagging:

Ha, ha, you know it all, don’t you?

When really they’ve made a mistake and they didn’t really get it correct.

Now, there is a word, a noun. We can say a know-all. And when we try and tell, when we speak to somebody that thinks they know everything. ‘Ah, you’re just a know-all.’ You mean you think you know it all.

So know it all and know-all are slightly different but with the same intention and the same meeting.

Collocations with ALL - Podcast Episode

And then the next one is

to be all something

Usually, we use this with words like to be all smiles. Or to be all innocent.

So what do they mean? Well, to be all smiles as somebody who’s always got a smile on the face, but behind it, there might lurk a hidden meaning.

The guy might not be so sincere with these smiles and say: ‘Ah, that guy, he’s all smiles. But really you need to be very careful about him because he would stick the knife in when he’s when you’re not looking.’

To be all innocent means when someone says: ‘It wasn’t me, I couldn’t have done that. Oh my God.’

So to be all innocent means somebody who denies that they had any part in anything or they are acting a little bit innocently. And again, there’s something there underneath that you might think they’re not as innocent as you think they are.

And this one is one of my favourites,

all talk

So all talk often comes with another expression – all talk but no action. So you can get the hint from that.

But exactly it means. So when we talk about somebody being all talk it’s and nah, nah, nah. But they never followed through with any specific action.

When somebody is all talk, they usually tell you what they’re going to do and they’d tell you again what they’re going to do and they’ll tell you again what they’re going to do. But there’s no action. They don’t follow it through.

11 English Collocations with All

And the next one we have is

all-nighter

This is the sort of an invented word. An all-nighter can be a really rough party. I’ve had a few of those in my time, I can tell you.

We’re nearly there now and just one last one.

all in all

All in all, it means taking everything together.

Well, all in all, it wasn’t such a bad performance, was it? All in all, we won the match.

Okay, guys. So that completes the lesson for today and we were talking about collocations with all.

So as I said at the beginning, press that button and subscribe to my YouTube channel Learn English with Harry, and if you want to contact me, you can do so on www.englishlessonviaskype.com

and when getting there, you’ll find a link to my Easy Peasy English club. It’s a great club to help you to learn better English, to speak better English, to make better pronunciation and above all to make you much more confident in your English.

Click here to join the Easy Peasy Club.

Okay, join me again soon.