for all practical purposes

for (all) practical purposes

In reality; basically. For all practical purposes, I might as well have not handed in this proposal at all, with how swiftly the board rejected it.
See also: practical, purpose
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

for all practical purposes

as might be reasonably expected; essentially. For all practical purposes, this is simply a matter of right and wrong. This should be considered final, for all practical purposes.
See also: all, practical, purpose
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • for (all) practical purposes
  • for practical purposes
  • all intents and purposes, for (to)
  • for all intents and purposes
  • marriage of convenience
  • for all intensive purposes
  • tap (someone or something) with (something)
  • tap with
  • tap on
  • tap on (something)
References in periodicals archive
For all practical purposes, Arthur Andersen is gone now, quickly abandoned in the face of crisis by its partners, employees, and clients.
For all practical purposes, this structure gives each individual the assurance of financial protection for all unrelated assets in the event of law suits, bankruptcy.
DWDM has increased the carrying capacity of fibre links to such an extent that, for all practical purposes, the network will stay well ahead of the data for years to come.
The artist, after all, has seen to it that for all practical purposes InSite has footed the bill for an all-expenses-paid world tour, foregrounding and thus parodying the contractual aspect of the project.
For all practical purposes, Kuris says, an infected C.
Similarly, one might well say that the First Amendment's freedom of religion, such as it is, was for all practical purposes invented in the 1940s by Justices William O.
The number of secondary works cited in his footnotes is tiny; the zipper, for all practical purposes, had no previous historical scholarship.
For all practical purposes, Ethel was the owner of 5% of the family fund at her death.
However, the court rejected the trustee's argument; although the election in the ruling was allowed, the sale of the personal residence took place, for all practical purposes, before the taxpayer's death and before the asset passed to the estate.
The pressure worked: Congress, fearing the wrath of hoards of angry, politically active seniors, repealed the act, ending, for all practical purposes, the effort to provide seniors with security against the exorbitant costs of long-term or debilitating illness.
Since the primary contribution to the variation in P* is due to packing effects, we have for all practical purposes a "bland" interaction between cis, trans and vinyl units.
It is not generally recognized that any real profit to a raw material producer at the first point of sale is for all practical purposes debt-free money that enters the economy--and stays there.
In the same year, the Harvard Ad Hoc Committee declared that a person who was in irreversible coma was, for all practical purposes, though not in reality, dead.
He said that by the time the airplanes arrived in Zaire in September 1994, Operation Blessing's "need for airplane activity for all practical purposes had ceased" because of mechanical problems with the planes and chaotic conditions in the country that made medical relief too dangerous.
For all practical purposes, he says, the center is a small business that derives all of its funds from its clients--many of them corporations or governments.