Meanings
- not comparablevery, all too.
I'll be only too happy to help.
3 more examples
I'm only too keen to leave school.
In a crisis I am only too well aware that I am always left to find a way out, but that night I felt hardly adequate even to ordinary conversation
1922, Stephen McKenna, The Confessions of a Well-Meaning WomanAfter some miles of country lanes he reached the high road, and as he turned into it and glanced along its white length, he saw approaching him a speck that turned into a dot and then into a blob, and then into something very familiar; and a double note of warning, only too well known, fell on his delighted ear.
1913, Kenneth Grahame, chapter 10, in The Wind in the Willows - not comparableto a high degree; very well or very much
You understand?” “Only too well.” Sudhir said wryly.
2014, Trina Chako, Sisters1 more example
Cities were not built to handle this volume of last-mile activity – a fact that firms such as UPS realise only too well.
2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian
Synonyms & antonyms
adverbto a high degree
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Cite this entry
only too. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/only%20too
“only too.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/only%20too. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “only too,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/only%20too.
Source: only too on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.