whole: one thing taken in its full extent, with nothing of it left out
This word looks at a single thing and says you have all of it, not just a part. Whatever it describes is taken in full: the whole body, the whole city, the whole law, the whole world. The point is completeness of one thing, not a count of many separate items.
That is what makes it different from the more common word for "all" or "every," which sweeps across many members and counts each one. This word does not count members; it embraces the single thing as a unit. "The whole city was stirred up" pictures the city as one body that was moved, not a head count of every resident. The Bible's most famous use, "love God with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind," is the same: not many hearts but the one heart, given completely, with no part held back.
It is flexible about what it joins to. It can stretch over a place (the whole region of Galilee), an object (the whole lump of dough, the whole body), an institution (the whole law), or a person described as wholly one way (born entirely in sin, clean all over). In every case the sense is steady: the entire thing, undivided and complete.