determiner, pronoun, adverb
determiner, pronoun
1 any or every; anything or everything:
Take whatever action is needed. * Do whatever you like.
2 used when you are saying that it does not matter what sb does or what happens, because the result will be the same:
Whatever decision he made I would support it. * You have our support, whatever you decide.
3 (especially BrE) used in questions to express surprise or confusion:
Whatever do you mean? * Chocolate-flavoured carrots! Whatever next?
4 (spoken, ironic) used as a reply to tell sb that you do not care what happens or that you are not interested in what they are talking about:
'You should try a herbal remedy.' 'Yeah, whatever.'
5 (spoken, especially AmE) used to say that you do not mind what you do, have, etc. and that anything is acceptable:
'What would you like to do today?' 'Whatever.'
IDIOMS
or whatever (spoken) or something of a similar type:
It's the same in any situation: in a prison, hospital or whatever.
whatever you do used to warn sb not to do sth under any circumstances:
Don't tell Paul, whatever you do!
Part of speech: adverb
1 (also whatsoever) no, nothing, none, etc. ~ not at all; not of any kind:
They received no help whatever. * 'Is there any doubt about it?' 'None whatsoever.'
2 (informal) used to say that it does not matter what sb does, or what happens, because the result will be the same:
We told him we'd back him whatever.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for whatever is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is whatever a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, whatever is tagged as adverb.
Does whatever appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — whatever appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
