all along

1. 1.

   all the time or over a period of time

   “She had known all along”

   “the hope had been there all along”

   Synonymsright along

Questions about all along

What does all along mean?

all along means "all the time or over a period of time".

What is another word for all along?

Close synonyms include right along. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is all along a common word?

all along is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.