Everything vs. All

all every everything indefinite pronouns universal pro-forms

'Everything' is an indefinite pronoun but 'all' can take many different parts of speech in a sentence. Here we will compare these two words.

What Is the Difference between 'All' and 'Everything'?

Everything

'Everything' is usually an indefinite pronoun which means it can be used as either the subject or object of a verb.

Everything went well. (subject)

They took everything. (object)

All

On the other hand, 'all' as a quantifier can take many different grammatical functions. For example:

'All' as a determiner
'All' as a pronoun
'All' as a part of an adverb, like 'all around', 'all over'
'All' as a part of an adjective, like 'all done', 'all right'

The important thing to know about 'all' is that it is almost always used as a determiner which means it is used with a noun (or a noun phrase).

All the students were gathering to protest.

She ate all the cake!

But it is also used as a pronoun (without any nouns following it).

All I want is you.

'All' is used in the construction where we want to specifically say all of a group.

All of the students were gathering to protest.

She bought all of them.

In summary, 'everything' is an indefinite pronoun and refers to each and every one thing. The important thing to know is that 'everything' cannot be used as a determiner and cannot be followed by a noun.

Similarities between 'All' and 'Everything'

When 'everything' and 'all' are both used as pronouns, in some cases we can use them interchangeably.

Is that all?

Is that everything?

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