The most popular online dictionary and thesaurus for learners of English
only to do sth
Definition
› used to show that something is surprising or unexpected: He spent ages negotiating for a pay increase, only to resign from his job soon after he'd received it.Not expected or planned
(Definition of only to do sth from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus
© Cambridge University Press)
Browse related topics
You are looking at an entry to do with Not expected or planned, but you might be interested in these topics from the Using the mind topic area:
- Analysing and evaluating
- Aware
- Believable
- Believing
- Changing your mind
- Concluding and deducing
- Continually thinking about
- Decisions and deciding
- Deep in thought
- Difficult to understand
- Dreaming
- Easy to understand
- Empathy and sensitivity
- Experienced
- Experts and specialists
- Expressing and asking opinions
- Forgetting and forgetfulness
- Guesses and assumptions
- Guessing, supposing and suspecting
- Ideas, concepts and theories
- Imagining and conceiving
- Inability and awkwardness
- Inexperienced (of people)
- Inexperienced people and lack of experience
- Inspiration and inspiring
- Intelligence
- Intelligent people
- Judgments and analyses
- Knowledge and awareness
- Logic and reason
- Memory and memories
- Mind and personality
- Misunderstanding
- Not believable
- Not believing
- Opinions, beliefs and points of view
- People who analyse and judge
- People who make predictions
- Philosophy
- Planning, expecting and arranging
- Plans and arrangements
- Predicting things and intuition
- Remembering, reminding and reminders
- Skill, talent and ability
- Skilled, talented and able
- Solving and solutions
- Stupid and silly
- Stupid and silly behaviour
- Stupid and silly people
- Testing, checking and experimenting
- Thinking and contemplating
- Trusting and not trusting
- Unaware
- Understanding and comprehending
- Wise and sensible
Browse the Dictionary
Browse the Thesaurus
SMART Thesaurus: Not expected or planned
Synonyms and related words:
- abrupt adjective (SUDDEN)
- ad hoc adjective
- ad lib adverb
- adventitious adjective
- against (all) the odds/against all odds idiom
- all at once idiom
- extemporize verb
- inconceivable adjective
- instinctive adjective
- involuntary adjective
- it's just one of those things idiom
- just like that idiom
- sharply adverb (SUDDENLY)
- sudden adjective
- suddenly adverb
- summary adjective
- unannounced adjective, adverb
- unawares adverb
- undreamed of adjective
- unwitting adjective
Our dictionaries
Word of the Day
Blog
Read our blog about how the English language behaves.
New Words
Find words and meanings that have just started to be used in English, and let us know what you think of them.
