| 词组 | everybody, everyone |
| 释义 | everybody, everyone Most of the discussions written about the indefinite pronouns everybody and everyone in usage books overlook important considerations. Here is a typical example: • Pronoun after "everyone. " The pronoun to be used after the word "everyone" apparently troubles even our most careful writers, as witness: "Give everyone credit for having the courage of their convictions." This might get by in colloquial speech but it is not sanctioned in good writing —Bernstein 1958 The problem is, of course, the same one we find with almost all the indefinite pronouns (see agreement: indefinite pronouns)—everyone and everybody are grammatically singular but notionally plural. Their natural tendency is to take singular verbs and plural pronouns. Some four years later Bernstein is concerned about everybody: • "And so everybody took their guitars and songs, their poetry and perambulators, their high-bouncers and dogs, and went peacefully home." Here is an instance in which the proper pronouns—"his" or "his or her" won't work —Bernstein 1962 Indeed, the "proper pronouns" would make silly stuff out of the sentence. Bernstein's solution, of course, is to write the sentence over, to "face frankly this inadequacy of the language." But there is really nothing wrong with the pronouns in the sentence as it stands. Bernstein is one of numerous modern descendants of the 18th-century grammarians Lowth and Lindley Murray, who first decided such pronouns should be singular. Bernstein has company: Bremner 1980, Shaw 1975, Nickles 1974, Colter 1981, Kilpatrick 1984, Simon 1980 all agree with his views. On the other side of the question, Copperud 1970 cites Evans 1957 and Flesch 1964. Longman 1984, Heritage 1982, and Reader's Digest 1983 find the plural pronouns acceptable. Jacques Barzun puts it more strongly: • ... it seems to me clear that good sense requires us to say "Everybody took their hats and filed out." — Atlantic, January 1946 One of the points made about notional plurality in several sources is that a pronoun in a coordinate clause or in a following sentence referring back to everyone or everybody is always plural—must be plural in normal English. To demonstrate this point we will call on dancer Sally Rand, as recorded by Studs Terkel: • Flashlights went off and the music played, and everybody was happy. They said: do it again —Hard Times, 1970 Try substituting he or he or she in that second sentence, and see how absurd it is. In our first citation from Bernstein above, there is an assertion that reference to everyone (or everybody) by they, their, them is not sanctioned in good writing. The assertion is false. Such reference may be found in important literature and other reputable writing from the 16th century to the present. Here is an extensive selection of examples (many of these are taken from Jespersen 1909-49, Hodgson 1889, and McKnight 1926). • ... every one prepared themselves —George Pettie, A Petite Pallace of Pettie his Pleasure, 1576 (in McKnight) • ... but God send every one their heart's desire — Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1599 • ... when every body else is upon their knees —The Spectator, No. 171 (in Jespersen) • ... frighted every body else out of their senses — Thomas Gray, letter, 15 July 1736 • ... everybody had their due importance —Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, 1814 • ... entreating everybody to drown themselves — P. B. Shelley, Essays and Letters, ca. 1822 (in Jespersen) • ... every body has played the fool in their turn —Sir Walter Scott, The Antiquary, 1815 (in Jespersen) • Let us give everybody their due —Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, 1839 (in Jespersen) • ... everybody might have been born idiots, instead of having their right senses —George Eliot, The Lifted Veil, 1859 (in Jespersen) • ... everybody conjectured that I perished last night; and they were wondering how they must set about the search for my remains —Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, 1847 • It is true that when perspective was first discovered, everybody amused themselves with it —John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing, 1857 (in Hodgson) • ... everybody can select which they please —Lewis Carroll, letter, 14 Nov. 1883 • Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes —Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1893 • ... everybody has to take their chance in this world —James Stephens, The Crock of Gold, 1912 • Everybody ought to do what they can —Willa Cather, O Pioneers!, 1913 • ... a definite plan for everybody in my department to help maintain their physical condition —Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter, 2 June 1917, in Franklin D. Roosevelt's Own Story, ed. Donald Day, 1951 • ... can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925 • I mean we want every one to have all the good, clean fun they can —New Yorker, 28 Aug. 1926 • Everybody joined in several hymns, their firm warm voices carrying all through the ship —Katherine Anne Porter, Accent, Summer 1946 • ... I want everyone here in this country and in the world to feel their personal concern in the success of the United Nations —Clement Attlee, speech, 22 Nov. 1945 • Everybody has a right to describe their own party machine as they choose —Sir Winston Churchill, in Encounter, April 1954 • Everyone was on their best behaviour —Elizabeth Taylor, The Soul of Kindness, 1964 • "... everyone would rise to their feet." —Malcolm Muggeridge, The Green Stick, 1972 • Everybody involved ... disclosed their illiteracy — Charlene & Am Tibbetts, What's Happening to American English, 1978 • Everyone knew where they stood —E. L. Doctorow, Loon Lake, 1979 • Almost everyone in the car is watching and pretending they're not —Jay Mclnerney, Bright Lights, Big City, 1984 They, their, them have been used in reference to everybody and everyone for more than 400 years in literature. You should not be dismayed by the fact that everyone and everybody regularly take a singular verb but a plural pronoun referent. That's just the way the indefinite pronouns behave in idiomatic English. Reader's Digest 1983 says "If you prefer everyone... they as being more natural, don't apologize." We agree. But do not feel that you have to use they, their, or them, if they do not seem natural to you. The choice is yours. Sometimes even first-person pronouns are used quite naturally: • She's the doctor from Australia who goes around telling everybody we're all gonna die —Arlo Guthrie, quoted in Yankee, August 1986 It is worth mentioning that evidence in the Merriam-Webster files—drawn almost entirely from edited written prose—shows that both everyone and everybody have been more frequently used with plural pronouns than singular ones in the 20th century. Everyone is more than twice as likely as everybody to be used with a singular pronoun, perhaps from the underlying pressure toward singularity created by -one. See also notional agreement, notional concord; they, their, them. |
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