anything
an·y·thing/ˈɛn.i.θɪŋ/pronoun, noun, verb, adverb
anything is spelled A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G, 3 syllables: an·y·thing. The wrong spelling people search most is anthing: about 30 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 110 of all searches for the word. Anything is a pronoun meaning “Any object, act, state, event, or fact whatsoever; a thing of any kind; something or other”.
How many letters and syllables are in anything?
| Letters | 8: A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3: an·y·thing |
| In writing | 355 times per million words; the 256th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 6; the most searched, anthing, about 30 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell anything?
Anything is spelled A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G. 6 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 37 of the searches for anything in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is anything?
Anything appears 355 times per million words in written English, the 256th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce anything?
- UK /ˈɛn.ɪ.θɪŋ/
- UK /ˈɛn.i.θɪŋ/
- US /ˈɛn.i.θɪŋ/
Anything has 3 syllables, split an·y·thing in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-anything.wav, En-us-anything.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with anything
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Also written: any thing (one word or two).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Forms of anything
- anythings plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- anythinging participle, present
- anythinged participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does anything mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
pronoun
- 1
Any object, act, state, event, or fact whatsoever; a thing of any kind; something or other.
I would not do it for anything.
- 2
Expressing an indefinite comparison.
noun
- 1
Someone or something of importance.
verb
- 1
colloquialUsed as a placeholder verb for any verb out of a set of related verbs.
He wasn't cooking, he wasn't sweeping, he wasn't anythinging!
adverb
- 1
In any way, any extent or any degree.
That isn't anything like a car.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Anything in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense any thing of any kind:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | n’importe quoi, rien |
| German | irgendetwas, irgendwas |
| Portuguese | qualquer coisa |
| Spanish | cualquier cosa |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does anything come from?
From Middle English anything, enything, onything, from Late Old English aniþing, from earlier ǣniġ þing (literally “any thing”), equivalent to any + thing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).