Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary - anyone

or anybody Frequency: The word is one of the 1500 most common words in English. 1. You use anyone or anybody in statements with negative meaning to indicate in a general way that nobody is present or involved in an action. You needn’t talk to anyone if you don’t want to... He was far too scared to tell anybody... PRON 2. You use anyone or anybody in questions and conditional clauses to ask or talk about whether someone is present or doing something. Why would anyone want that job?... If anyone deserves to be happy, you do. PRON 3. You use anyone or anybody before words which indicate the kind of person you are talking about. It’s not a job for anyone who is slow with numbers... Anybody interested in pop culture at all should buy ‘Pure Cult’. PRON: PRON cl/group 4. You use anyone or anybody to refer to a person when you are emphasizing that it could be any person out of a very large number of people. Anyone could be doing what I’m doing... PRON c darkgreen]emphasis 5. You use anyone who is anyone and anybody who is anybody to refer to people who are important or influential. PHRASE