whole ball of wax, the

Slang definitions & phrases for whole ball of wax, the

whole ball of wax, the

noun phrase

The totality; everything; the whole thing; the WHOLE SHEBANG: For that price you get the whole ball of wax

[1950s+; origin unknown; perhaps fr a manner of distributing the land of an estate to heirs, described in the early 1600s, in which the amount of each portion is concealed in a ball of wax that is drawn out of a hat in a sort of lottery. If so, the term went unrecorded for a very long time]


Idioms and Phrases with whole ball of wax, the

whole ball of wax, the

Also,
the whole enchilada or shooting match or shebang
. Everything, all the elements, the entire affair. For example,
The union demanded higher wages, a pension plan, job security—the whole ball of wax
, or
The contract includes paperback rights, film rights, electronic media—the whole enchilada
, or
She lost her job, her pension, her health-care coverage, the whole shooting match
. Not all the allusions in these slangy terms are clear.
Ball of wax
may refer to a 17th-century English legal practice whereby land was divided among heirs by covering scraps of paper representing portions of land with wax, rolling each into a ball, and drawing the balls from a hat. An
enchilada
combines several foods inside a tortilla; a
shooting match
denotes a shooting competition; and a
shebang
is a rude hut or shelter. The first two of these slangy terms date from the second half of the 1900s, the last two from the late 1800s. For synonyms, see