any thing

English

Pronoun

any thing

1. Obsolete form of anything.
   • 1600, translation attributed to Thomas Nashe, The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles by Tomaso Garzoni, London: Edward Blount, Discourse 6, pp. 32-33,^[1]

     The intemperature of the braine is the cause of al this (as phisitions affirme) which maketh all the officiall, and functiue parts full of heauines and indisposition, and so through this hebetude (to vse their terme) vnapt to keepe in minde any thing.

   • 1811, [Jane Austen], chapter XIII, in Sense and Sensibility […], volume I, London: […] C[harles] Roworth, […], and published by T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 161:

     I am not sensible of having done any thing wrong in walking over Mrs. Smith’s grounds, or in seeing her house.

   • 1869 September, E. P. Willard, “A Night and a Day on the Sierra Nevada”, in The Western Monthly, volume II, number 9, Chicago, Ill.: Reed, Browne & Co., publishers, No. 18 Tribune Building, →OCLC, page 179, column 2:

     The driver […] neither knew any thing, said any thing, or did any thing but watch a dozen equine ears, and keep six reins taut in his hands, and coax the off wheel[-]horse with the belly of his whip-lash every two minutes, invariably accompanying the stroke with a tremendous solitary cluck.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see any,‎ thing.
   • 2015, Bill Brown, “Things—in Theory”, in Other Things, Chicago, Ill., London: The University of Chicago Press, published 2019, →ISBN, page 23:

     All this may clarify what I mean by the other thing, by the distinction between object and thing, but such clarity comes, of course, at the expense of the local detail where any thing occurs.