IN THE LEAST

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does in the least mean? 

• IN THE LEAST (adverb)
  The adverb IN THE LEAST has 2 senses:

1. to any extent at all

2. in the slightest degree or in any respect

  Familiarity information: IN THE LEAST used as an adverb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IN THE LEAST (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

To any extent at all

Synonyms:

even a little; in the least

Context example:

are you in the least interested?

Sense 2

Meaning:

In the slightest degree or in any respect

Synonyms:

at all; in the least; the least bit

Context example:

was not in the least unfriendly

 Context examples 

Oh, I don't doubt that, Master Copperfield, he answered; not in the least.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Did it not seem to you in the least wrong to live in that way, first with one mistress and then another?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Mr Elliot's having any views on me will not in the least account for the efforts he made towards a reconciliation with my father.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Charles turned his back and drew the lashings down as well as he could, which was not in the least well.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The driver, however, was not in the least disturbed; he kept turning his head to left and right, but I could not see anything through the darkness.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

But Dorothy, knowing her to be a witch, had expected her to disappear in just that way, and was not surprised in the least.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

People in the most polluted quarter of neighborhoods were at least six per cent more likely to report having glaucoma than those in the least polluted.

(Air Pollution Can Trigger Glaucoma, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

I was not in the least sensible of the progressive motion made in the air by the island.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Not that I am in the least conventional in that respect myself.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Not that in appearance he seemed in the least gorilla-like.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)