Each

How to spell each

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce each

What does each mean?

1. determinerUsed to refer to every one of two or more people or things, considered separately.

Each in a sentence

• Each employee received a separate copy of the new policy.

• The tickets cost twelve pounds each.

Where does each come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from Old English ǣlc, a compressed form of an earlier compound that combined ā, meaning 'ever' or 'always', with gelīc, meaning 'alike' or 'similar', so the underlying sense was something like 'ever alike' or 'every single one'. Over centuries of rapid speech the bulky compound was worn down to a tidy single syllable, which is why the modern spelling gives no hint of the two parts that built it. The same gelīc element also survives in the everyday words 'like' and 'alike', and it lurks inside 'every' and 'either' as well, all of which share that family of distributive meaning. The word settled into its current form during the Middle English period, and although the 'ea' looks like the vowel in 'speak', here it simply spells the long 'ee' sound. Because it is so short and so common, adults almost never pause over it, yet its origin as a fused phrase is a small surprise.

How the word is built

• ae- (from Old English ǣlc, a compound of ā 'ever, always'
• gelīc 'alike') fused into a single word