Meanings
- not comparableVery well
2006. Nadia Yassine. Full Sails Ahead. Justice and Spirituality Publications. page 2. He knows full well that I don't like that club.
3 more examples
He is so fayre, withoutten les, / he semys full well to sytt on des.
He is so fair, without any limit; his appearance shows well when he sits on the dais.
15th c., “[The Creation]”, in Wakefield Mystery Plays; Re-edited in George England, Alfred W. Pollard, editors, The Towneley Plays (Early English Text Society Extra Series; LXXI), London: […] Oxford University Press, 1897, →OCLC, page 5, lines 120–121Besides, there is always a tendency—indeed an interest—to take on what one knows full well.
1829, Charles Burroughs, Memoirs and select papers of Horace B. Morse, Miller and Brewster, pages 83–87It also means that when a right-wing Jewish group such as the ZOA chooses to overlook Bannon’s well-documented links to anti-Semitic white nationalists, it puts itself on a moral par with J.V.P. Bannon is the man who expressly called Breitbart News “the platform for the alt-right,” knowing full-well the toxic range of opinion encompassed by the term.
2017 November 16, Bret Stephens, “Steve Bannon Is Bad for the Jews”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 18 Nov 2017
Origin
- Old Englishful wel
- Middle Englishfol wel
- Englishfull well
From Middle English fol wel, fulwel, from Old English ful wel, equivalent to full + well. Compare Old Norse all-vel (“full well”).
More words from Middle English, Old English
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
full well. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/full%20well
“full well.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/full%20well. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “full well,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/full%20well.
Source: full well on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.