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''wherewithal'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260727004347-00-⌔

wherewithal - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

wherewithal (countable and uncountable, plural wherewithals)

  • The ability and means required to accomplish some task.
    • ✤ I would like to help your project, but I do not have the wherewithal.
    • ✤ Justice was sold at the tribunals, and the most enormous crimes escaped from punishment, when the criminals had wherewithal to corrupt their judges.1
    • ✤ Big Council meeting! At the bookshop in twenty minutes. Carfare will be refunded. Can we scrape together the wherewithal?2
    • ✤ “I just can’t imagine,” Philip said, “having that kind of self-knowledge, that kind of… wherewithal at fifteen. […]”3
    • ✤ […] A single slice of this could leave you supine in front of the Queen’s speech without even the wherewithal to reach for the remote control.4
    • ✤ Although Emma comes to realise she’s trapped in a kind of hell, married to a dullard she despises, she lacks the intellectual wherewithal to plot a breakout more sophisticated than consorting with idiots such as Leon and Rodolphe.5
    • ✤ In political economic terms, the pandemic worked to intensify a development that the decline in the neoliberal order had already set in motion: namely, a conviction that government was the only institution with the wherewithal to address severe economic and social hardship.6

Adverb

wherewithal (not comparable)

  • (archaic) In what way; how.
    • ✤ * Wherewithall shall a yong man cleanse his way? by taking heede thereto according to thy word.*7
  • (archaic) By means of which.
    • ✤ Synonyms: whereby, wherewith
    • ✤ Rich. Northumberland, thou Ladder wherewithall/The mounting Bullingbrooke aſcends my Throne8

Etymology

From where- +‎ withal. Originally only an adverb, nominal use since ca. 1800.

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA: /ˈwɛə.wɪ.ðɔːl/
  • (US) IPA: /ˈwɛɚ.wɪ.ðɔl/, /ˈwɛɚ.wɪ.θɔl/
  • (cot–caught merger) IPA: /ˈwɛɚ.wɪ.ðɑl/, /ˈwɛɚ.wɪ.θɑl/
  • Hyphenation: where‧with‧al
  • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Audio (Australian): 🔊

Printed 2026-07-27.

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Footnotes

  1. 1688, John Dryden, The Life of St Francis Xavier, book II, translation of original by Dominique Bouhours: ↩

  2. 1954, Edward Eager, Half Magic: ↩

  3. 1986, David Leavitt, The Lost Language of Cranes, paperback edition, Penguin, page 67: ↩

  4. 2011 December 15, Felicity Cloake, “How to cook the perfect nut roast”, in Guardian ‎: ↩

  5. 2019, John O’Connell, Bowie’s Bookshelf, →ISBN: ↩

  6. 2022, Gary Gerstle, chapter 8, in *The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order […] *, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, Part II. The Neoliberal Order, 1970–2020: ↩

  7. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 119:9: ↩

  8. 1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 41, column 2: ↩

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