EN: everybody / everyone / anybody / anyone / somebody / someone + agreement: singular or plural? (2025)

Must we say:
"everybody do" or "everybody does" ?
"somebody do" or "somebody does" ?
"anybody do" or "anybody does" ?

Moderator note: Multiple threads have been merged to create this one. See also the following thread about the personal pronoun choice: EN: anyone / someone + personal pronoun (he, she, his, her / they, their / one's).

we say

every one is affected by some events in his/her life
or
every one are affected by some events in their lives?

MERCI

Grammatically it should be everyone is.
Anyway, I believe that the second one is very common in colloquial English.

tilt said:

Everyone is affected by some events in their life.
It sounds strange for non English ears, but it's said this way.

Click to expand...

his/her are also possible, but as you say most English speakers would be most likely to use their.

Tom

Because it's got so common that everyone uses it now, I guess.

Strictly speaking everyone has a singular meaning -- that's why singular verbs are used with it, and thus pronouns also should be singular, but the reality is different.

If you have a look at another pronoun from the same group you will see that the pronouns are singular, e.g.:
something
Something went wrong, didn't it?

Tom

Bonjour ^^

je suis en train de me créer plein de petits doutes (ça m'occupe pendant les grèves ) : lorsque l'on conjugue un verbe avec un nom tel que anyone, anything (quelque chose qui commence par any), le verbe qui suit doit être à la troisième personne du singulier, non ?
Et en est-il de même pour les noms en every- ?

Une autre question sur ces noms : si je veux utiliser un pronom possessif, lequel se réfère à anyone et à everyone ? Their ?

Merci beaucoup pour votre aide

le verbe qui suit doit être à la troisième personne du singulier does not do

Everybody does it.
Anyone who does that is bad.

pour le possessif

Everyone should do their homework.
Can anyone spell their name backwards really quickly?

(I think you could say 'his or her' in the second case as well.)

Can you give some examples yourself?

sorry66 said:

Can you give some examples yourself?

Click to expand...

Actually my question wasn't with respect to an instance in particular.
I just couldn't think right

Thanks for your help soryy66

Sorry a raison. Dans l'anglais courant, on entend souvent,
"Can anyone spell his or her name backwards?"

Grammaticalemet, c'est correct, mais ce ne sonne pas bien; de plus en plus on dit,
"Can anyone spell their name backwards?"

Sur un éxamen vous devriez écrire la première phrase.

To come back to the original question (let's not get side tracked on the usage of "their," please - that would belong in another thread)...

Both "everyone" and "anyone" require a 3rd person singular conjugation.

It's quite like French: tout le monde peut..., n'importe qui peut...

tilt said:

Everyone is affected by some events in their life.

Click to expand...

On ne met pas au pluriel : "their lives" ?
Après tout, ils ont chacun une vie, non ?

Comme everyone représente n'importe qui et qu'il s'emploie donc au singulier, équivalent en cela à on ou tout le monde en français, il est logique d'employer également le singulier pour life.

Mais si l'on parlait de plusieurs personnes en particulier, on utiliserait le pluriel : They had some ups and downs in their lives.

Voir également les discussions suivantes :
EN: according to their race(s)
EN: their sense(s) of humor

Bonjour,

J'ai bien noté qu'avec everybody le verbe est au singulier et le possessif au pluriel.

Mais comment expliquer cette phrase trouvée dans un cours d'anglais ?
Everybody does what they 're good at.

Est-elle correcte ? Habituelle ? Faut-il l'ériger en phrase-modèle ?

Merci

Bonjour Paquita,

EN: anyone / someone + personal pronoun (he, she, his, her / they, their / one's) - grammaire
They est un neutre (politiquement correct).

Hello!
I just spotted this in the song "Shatter Me" from Lindsey Stirling.
She says "somebody make me feel alive" or "somebody shine a light"

It seams that she's using the word "somebody" as if it was "they" isn't she ?
[…]

So far I've just seen things like "somebody has" or so, like in here : EN: anyone / someone + personal pronoun (he, she, his, her / they, their / one's)
Is she mistaken ?

The meaning of "Somebody make me feel alive" is:

"I am calling to an unknown person - somebody - and asking them to make me feel alive."

It's the same construction as "Waiter, pour me a beer!" and would have been better with a comma after somebody.