Anything

How to spell anything

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce anything

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does anything mean?

1. pronounAny thing whatever; a thing of any kind, with no particular one specified.

Anything in a sentence

• She would do anything to finish the project on time.

• There was hardly anything left in the fridge by Friday.

Where does anything come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a compound built from two very old native English elements, 'any' and 'thing', and it has been written as a single word since the Middle English period. The first part, 'any', comes from Old English 'ǣnig', meaning 'one of any number', which was itself related to the word for 'one'. The second part, 'thing', came from Old English 'þing', a word that originally meant a meeting, an assembly, or a matter brought before such a gathering, only later softening into the broad modern sense of any object or item. The fusion produced a single indefinite term covering any object, event, or matter without limit. Because both halves are everyday Germanic survivals, the spelling is wholly regular, and the only mild trap is remembering it is written closed up as one word rather than two.

How the word is built

• any (from Old English ǣnig: any, one)
• thing (from Old English þing: matter, object)