only too
adv1
Before adjective very, all too.
- I'll be only too happy to help.
- I'm only too keen to leave school.
2 more examples
- 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 conversation1922, Stephen McKenna, The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman:
- After 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:
2
Before adverb to a high degree; very well or very much
- 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:
- You understand?” “Only too well.” Sudhir said wryly.2014, Trina Chako, Sisters:
- Related terms
- full well, fully well