anything or everything?

[Kirauni]

I must say I got a little confused. I was asked to read through an English poem by a german-speaking Savannah member and there was the following sentence:

"I would do everything to spend a day there."


At first this sentence seemed correct to me, yet I got the urge to replace "everything" by "anything". You know the sentence of Scar? "Tell me, I would do anything". Or perhaps the famous pop song "I would do anything for love" ? Now I wondered what would be more appropriate. Anything or everything and when do you use rather anything than everything.

I'd be glad if someone could explain this to me for I didn't find anything about it in my grammar books. They only explain the difference between "any" and "some" which has not really something to do with my question.

Is there a difference between "anything" and "everything"? If yes, how do I know when to use which word?

[Albus]

I’m not very good at explaining things, but here are two links to dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/). I hope this helps a little anyway.

Anything (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anything)
Everything (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/everything)

[Kirauni]

I can see the difference now, thank you Albus. Still I wonder why Scar said "I will do anything." Could he also say "I'll do everything" in that particular situation on pride rock?

[Albus]

No. "Anything", in this case, meant "I'll do whatever you want, just don't kill me." If he had said "I'll do everything", in this case it would have made him Simba's slave, as "everything" means, in this case, to do absolutely all that was asked of him without question etc.

[The Sonic God]

Anything - Any single thing. A function of OR.
Everything - Every single thing. A function of AND.

Pretty much singular and plural. Make sense?

[Kirauni]

Ah... now that does make sense. Thank you for the example, Albus. I now got the meaning of both. And thank you Justin fo the definitions.
The problem is that here in German both is translated as "alles" and we don't express the two differences given in the example. For us it depends on how your voice sounds and how you stress the word "alles" to realize what the speaker meant. Oc course this can get confusing at times *gg*

Anyways I feel a little bit smarter now ;)
Thank you very much you two were a big help!

[The Sonic God]

Example: "Alles was ich will ist Zeit." This would be better translated as, CMIW, "All that I want is time." Stressing some key grammar differences, directly translated would be "All what I want is time." I could be wrong.