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Everything

pronounAll things; the whole of what exists or is relevant in a given situation.

How to spell everything

everything

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce everything

American pronunciation
EV-ree-thing
/ˈɛvriˌθɪŋ/

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What does everything mean?

  1. pronounAll things; the whole of what exists or is relevant in a given situation.

Everything in a sentence

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Where does everything come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a compound built from two thoroughly native English elements that were eventually fused into one. The first part, 'every', descends from Old English 'aefre aelc', a phrase meaning 'ever each', where 'aefre' meant 'always' or 'ever' and 'aelc' meant 'each'. The second part, 'thing', comes from Old English 'thing', which surprisingly first meant an assembly, council, or matter for discussion before it broadened to mean any object or affair at all. Writers in the medieval period began joining 'every' and 'thing' to express the totality of all matters, and by the 1300s the combination was settling into the single word we know today. Because it is a plain Germanic compound, its spelling is logical: it is simply 'every' followed by 'thing', and remembering that helps a writer keep the 'y' in place rather than dropping it.

How the word is built

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