all kinds of (people or things)

Many varieties or different types of (people or things). You meet all kinds of people when you live in a big city. It's a huge store with all kinds of dresses—I'm sure you'll find one you like. Our memories are laced with all kinds of subconscious mistakes and fabrications.

See also: all, kind, of

all kinds of (something)

slang Extremely; very. Oh, their family is all kinds of dysfunctional! That movie was all kinds of awesome! I can't wait to see it again. No, I don't want to buy this spooky old house—it's all kinds of rundown!

See also: all, kind, of

*all kinds of someone or something

Fig. a great number of people or things; a great amount of something, especially money. (*Typically: be ~; have ~.) There were all kinds of people there, probably thousands. The Smith family has all kinds of money.

See also: all, kind, of

all kinds of

1. Also, all manner or sorts of . All or many varieties of something, as in Before the banquet, they served all kinds of drinks, or He sold exotic fruit of all sorts, or The museum featured all manner of artifacts. [Early 1300s]

2. A large amount of something, as in She has all kinds of money. This hyperbolic usage is colloquial.

See also: all, kind, of

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

all kinds of

Informal

Plenty of; ample: We have all kinds of time to finish the job.

See also: all, kind, of

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

See also:

References in periodicals archive

I applaud the interest All Kinds of Minds has taken in evaluating the program, but I dispute that existing research has shown much of anything, least of all that the program is ready for statewide support.

Mel Levine's brain

But, as with Saint Ignatius, when you learn some of these stories, when you hear the heroism of some of these people, it can ignite all kinds of possibilities in you.

Saints: they did it their way: the editors interview Robert Ellsberg

There was this phantom movie that was being presented as my movie - particularly by writers who hadn't even seen the film - as being extraordinarily violent, and all kinds of stuff that it isn't.

Body work

On the other hand, all kinds of economic activity which were deterred by the fear of crime should increase.

Discontinuous change and the war on drugs

All kinds of uncontrollable events that may have a profound role in making us who we are.

Biology vs. the Blank Slate: evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker deconstructs the great myths about how the mind works

A major resource for me has been the historical avant-garde, which has provided all kinds of examples of how to link information.

Theory on TV: gadget goes to Florida

And that openness puts a terrible burden on the species, on our capacity not just for simple evil but for all kinds of self-deception and illusions.

Mythmaking in the promised land; an interview with Joel Kovel

That could help you as a therapist because there are all kinds of personal complaints, and people who come to you may very well also be sick.

Curing the Therapeutic State

You imagine a quadrilateral in which European men and Algerian men stand over against each other in one relation, and European women and Algerian women stand over against each other in another; and then all kinds of axes and parallel relations, all the permutations of these positions, come into play.

Translator translated

Suppose, for instance, that one had a world, a kind of mathematical world, in which the Mandelbrot set was somehow entering into complex feedback systems with all kinds of other nonlinear systems-the logistical equations, for instance, which produce an entirely different set of shapes, and so on.

Inventing arcadia: an interview with Frederick Turner