5 exercises — practise describing near-completion and near-certainty with "all but".
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "all but" plus a past participle to mean the migration is almost entirely finished?
"The database migration is all but complete, with only the archival tables left to move" correctly places "all but" directly before the adjective "complete", meaning "almost entirely". Option B wrongly adds "of" after "completed". Option C wrongly inserts "to". Option D wrongly moves "all but" after the adjective.
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "all but" plus a verb to mean an outcome was almost guaranteed?
"The proposal had all but guaranteed itself a majority" correctly keeps the past participle "guaranteed" agreeing with "had", with "all but" inserted before it to mean "almost". Option B wrongly uses the bare form "guarantee". Option C wrongly moves "all but" after the verb. Option D wrongly inserts "to".
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly distinguishes "all but" meaning "almost entirely" from "all but one/two" meaning "every one except"?
"The rollout is all but finished, and all but one region has already received the update" correctly uses "all but" alone before the adjective "finished" (almost entirely), and separately "all but one" before the noun "region" (every one except one). Options B, C, and D all scramble the two distinct constructions together.
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "all but" plus a noun phrase to mean a practice has become almost entirely standard?
"Automated testing has become all but a requirement for any production deployment pipeline" correctly places "all but" directly before the noun phrase "a requirement". Option B misorders the article and noun. Option C moves "all but" too late in the sentence. Option D wrongly inserts "of".
5 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "all but" plus an adjective to describe a bug that is nearly, but not completely, resolved?
"The memory leak is all but eliminated after the last three patches" correctly places "all but" directly before the past participle "eliminated". Option B wrongly uses the bare form "eliminate". Option C wrongly places "all but" before "is". Option D wrongly moves "all but" after the participle.