anything
English
Pronunciation
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈɛn.i.θɪŋ/
Audio (US) (file) - (Ireland) IPA(key): /ˈæ.ni.θɪŋ/
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈɛ.nɪ.θɪŋ/, /ˈɛ.ni.θɪŋ/
- (General Australian) IPA(key): /ˈɛ.nə.θɪŋ/
- Hyphenation: an‧y‧thing
Etymology 1
From Middle English anything, enything, onything, from Late Old English aniþing, from earlier ǣniġ þing (literally “any thing”), equivalent to any + thing.
Pronoun
anything
- Any object, act, state, event, or fact whatever; a thing of any kind; something or other.
- I would not do it for anything or any ring.
- Synonym: aught
- 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619:
- Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language […] his clerks […] understood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade, or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there.
- 2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8837, page 74:
- In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%.
- (with “as” or “like”) Expressing an indefinite comparison.
- 1916, Edward S. Moffat, Go Forth and Find, page 81-82:
- Perhaps it was this atmosphere of misplacedness and loneliness as much as anything which led her to speak to him one evening in early summer when the office had closed.
-
Derived terms
Translations
any thing of any kind
|
|
Noun
anything (plural anythings)
- Someone or something of importance.
- 1986, David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly:
- How long does it take to turn you actors into good anythings?
-
Translations
someone or something
|
Etymology 2
From Middle English anything, enything, onything, onythynge, from Old English ǣniġe þinga, ǣnġi þinga (literally “by any of things”), from ǣniġe, instrumental form of ǣniġ (“any”) + þinga, genitive plural of þing (“thing”).
Adverb
anything (not comparable)
References
- anything in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
Anagrams
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.