altogethers

altogethers

English

Noun

altogethers pl (plural only)

1. Nakedness.
   • 2001, William L. Biersach -, The Endless Knot, page 279:

     Well ya sees, Faddah, I knows it's a sin, it is, I knows it is, to watch faeries in their altogethers, if you gets me drift.

   • 2003, Lynn Kurland, A Dance Through Time:

     Armor was expensive, and it probably got in the way when they stripped down to their altogethers and shimmied up trees to drop.

   • 2014, Moises Kaufman, ‎Tectonic Theater Project, ‎Leigh Fondakowski, The Laramie Project and The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later:

     Yeah, I could run around the house in my altogethers, do the housework while the kids were in school.

2. (obsolete) The way things are; circumstances.
   • 1623, William Shakespeare & John Fletcher, King Henry VIII:

     Well, well, my lords (quoth the king), take him, and well use him, as hee is worthy to bee, and make no more adoe.” And with that, every man caught him by the hand, and made faire weather of altogethers, which might easilie be done with that man.

   • 1853, John Strype, Memorials of the Rev. Thomas Cranmer, page 195:

     And they were not past one year in their possessions, but that the reversion of every of them was sold for more years ; some for an hundred pounds, and some for more, and some for less, making sweepstakes of altogethers.

Adverb

altogethers (comparative more altogethers, superlative most altogethers)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of altogether
   • 1602, William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor:

     Give her this letter, for it is a 'oman that is altogethers acquaintance with Mistress Anne Page, and the letter is to desire and require her to solicit your master's desires to Mistress Anne Page.

   • 1791, Andrew Hamilton, An Enquiry Into the Principles of Taxation, page 287:

     Accordingly we find, that while no regulations, that ever were invented or applied, could stop the operations of the great distillers, the middling ones, in consequence of strićt watching, have been obliged to give up business altogethers.

   • 1859, John Gough Nichols, Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, page 266:

     For as towching his exchanges, me ought to consider with whome he had to do, specially with suche a prince as woulde not be brydeled, nor be againste-said in any of his requeste, oneles men wolde danger altogethers.

2. (obsolete) Alternative form of all together
   • 1718, An History of the Mitred Parliamentary Abbies:

     We have, everich of us, severally, and also altogethers, communed with hym, and used all such Motions as we thought mighte moste further that Purpose ;

   • 1822, John Strype, Ecclesiastical memorials, page 463:

     These words she hath said to them altogethers, and to eche of theym apart divers and sondry types.

   • 1841, Augustus Bozzi Granville, The Spas of England and Principal Sea-bathing Places:

     ...and lastly, I might have felt inclined to say a word on that commemorative column, which the reformers directed Messrs. Green to erect and Mr. Baily to surmount with the statue of their patron saint, in Portland stone well oiled, but which column has been left shorn of some of its fair proportions, through the slackening of the primitive fervour of the worshippers, who at last could not muster more than 2350l. for the architect, the sculptor, and the builder of the monument altogethers"