Word of the Day Archive
Tuesday September 2, 2003
en masse \en MASS; on MASS\ , adverb:
All together; as a whole.
United nations personnel, including military observers, pulled out en masse from Sierra Leone's rebel-besieged capital, Freetown.
-- "United Nations personnel pull out of capital", Irish Times, January 7, 1999
Following news of her husband's demise, Mary O'Sullivan united her children in London, and in the fall of 1827 they moved en masse to New York.
-- Edward L. Widmer, Young America
There was a moment of stunned silence and then frenzied applause, bellowing cheers, as the audience rose en masse from their seats.
-- Anne Edwards, Streisand: A Biography
Embittered by the spurning of his own work, he takes satisfaction in suckering the entire art world en masse, then pulling aside the curtain, exposing himself as a renegade genius and the art experts as the frauds and fools.
-- Peter Landesman, "A 20th-Century Master Scam", New York Times Magazine, July 18, 1999
En masse comes from the French en, "in" + masse, "mass."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for en masse
