ANYTHING | SOMETHING + adjective – English Grammar Profiler

Let’s look at some examples of the indefinite pronoun ‘something’ + adjective phrase.  This relates to “post positioned adjectives”

‘something’ is an indefinite pronoun.  ‘special’ is an adjective. The adjective post-modifies the pronoun.  The adjective makes the pronoun more specific.

(Watch example sentences)

The meaning of ‘something adjective‘ can be understood with similar grammar, but it is less natural:

• I’ll make a thing which is special for you.
• I’ll make a special thing for you.

The same goes for ‘anything’ however it is found most often in negative contexts and or questions:

(watch example sentences)

The English Grammar Profile lists the indefinite pronoun ‘something’ followed by an adjective at both B1 and A2.

B1 point 44 in the category of ADJECTIVES/position is defined:

adjective or adjective phrase after pronouns like ‘something’, ‘nothing’, ‘somewhere’, ‘nowhere’.

A2 point 37 in the category of PRONOUNS is defined:

modify ‘something’ or ‘anything’ with an adjective, to make it more specific.

The explanations do not make it clearer although intuition would suggest the object position and more simple vocabulary range could possibly be used to differentiate the CEFR levels. For now here at EnglishGrammar.Pro we propose that point 44 will include: nothing|somewhere|nowhere|anyone|everything|someone|everyone and point 37 remain as it is. This seems to fit with collocation frequency on the iWeb corpus too.

By the way, here are the most frequent 100 “something” + adjective collocations from the iWeb corpus:

1 SOMETHING NEW 136680

2 SOMETHING DIFFERENT 78582
3 SOMETHING SIMILAR 72228 4 SOMETHING WRONG 55670

5 SOMETHING SPECIAL 52467

6 SOMETHING GOOD 19012 7 SOMETHING INTERESTING 15842 8 SOMETHING UNIQUE 15771 9 SOMETHING IMPORTANT 14811 10 SOMETHING FUN 13143 11 SOMETHING BIGGER 11680 12 SOMETHING SIMPLE 11375 13 SOMETHING BIG 10931 14 SOMETHING BAD 10375 15 SOMETHING POSITIVE 9804 16 SOMETHING USEFUL 9721 17 SOMETHING GREAT 9112 18 SOMETHING BETTER 9068 19 SOMETHING SPECIFIC 8377 20 SOMETHING NICE 8255 21 SOMETHING EXTRA 7917 22 SOMETHING SWEET 7093 23 SOMETHING SMALL 6627 24 SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL 6597 25 SOMETHING AMAZING 6576 26 SOMETHING STUPID 6311 27 SOMETHING STRANGE 6225 28 SOMETHING AKIN 5462 29 SOMETHING UNEXPECTED 5180 30 SOMETHING COOL 5046 31 SOMETHING MAGICAL 4705 32 SOMETHING REAL 4438 33 SOMETHING MEANINGFUL 4394 34 SOMETHING GREATER 4317 35 SOMETHING UNUSUAL 4272 36 SOMETHING WONDERFUL 4236 37 SOMETHING WEIRD 4220 38 SOMETHING FUNNY 4211 39 SOMETHING ONLY 4121 40 SOMETHING TERRIBLE 3882 41 SOMETHING FRESH 3875 42 SOMETHING LARGER 3622 43 SOMETHING VALUABLE 3568 44 SOMETHING EXCITING 3563 45 SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY 3547 46 SOMETHING SERIOUS 3451 47 SOMETHING AWESOME 3188 48 SOMETHING WORTHWHILE 3176 49 SOMETHING CRAZY 3173 50 SOMETHING EASY 3171 51 SOMETHING NEGATIVE 3127 52 SOMETHING ODD 3047 53 SOMETHING TANGIBLE 2944 54 SOMETHING SMALLER 2767 55 SOMETHING CREATIVE 2637 56 SOMETHING QUICK 2615 57 SOMETHING SIGNIFICANT 2581 58 SOMETHING OLD 2552 59 SOMETHING DELICIOUS 2489 60 SOMETHING WORSE 2443 61 SOMETHING HEAVY 2340 62 SOMETHING LIGHT 2260 63 SOMETHING PERSONAL 2217 64 SOMETHING AWFUL 2190 65 SOMETHING OTHER 2189 66 SOMETHING OBVIOUS 2143 67 SOMETHING SUPER 2073 68 SOMETHING HEALTHY 2001 69 SOMETHING ORIGINAL 1996 70 SOMETHING STRONGER 1991 71 SOMETHING ILLEGAL 1972 72 SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE 1969 73 SOMETHING SILLY 1941 74 SOMETHING FAMILIAR 1888 75 SOMETHING HORRIBLE 1854 76 SOMETHING SOLID 1848 77 SOMETHING MAJOR 1845 78 SOMETHING INCREDIBLE 1762 79 SOMETHING FISHY 1719 80 SOMETHING PHYSICAL 1683 81 SOMETHING WARM 1679 82 SOMETHING HUGE 1628 83 SOMETHING REMARKABLE 1530 84 SOMETHING CHEAP 1515 85 SOMETHING LIGHTER 1509 86 SOMETHING SPECTACULAR 1475 87 SOMETHING CONCRETE 1409 88 SOMETHING SUITABLE 1381 89 SOMETHING RELEVANT 1343 90 SOMETHING DRASTIC 1330 91 SOMETHING HIGHER 1330 92 SOMETHING SIMPLER 1318 93 SOMETHING DANGEROUS 1313 94 SOMETHING DECENT 1313 95 SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS 1305 96 SOMETHING SOFT 1303 97 SOMETHING BLUE 1300 98 SOMETHING DIFFICULT 1299 99 SOMETHING CUTE 1297

100 SOMETHING DARK 1245

These are the top 25 A2 Adjectives that come in the structure ‘something + adjective’:

amazing, awesome, cool, crazy, dangerous, extra, fresh, healthy, heavy, higher, horrible, larger, negative, real, simple, simpler, soft, special, strange, stronger, terrible, unusual, useful, wonderful, worse

1 ANYTHING WRONG 27167

*Note that ‘wrong’ meaning ‘PROBLEM’ is B1 in the English Vocabulary Profile:

[never before noun] If something is wrong, there is a problem.

2 ANYTHING NEW 18368
3 ANYTHING SPECIAL 10623 4 ANYTHING DIFFERENT 7095 5 ANYTHING BAD 5763 6 ANYTHING BETTER 5312 7 ANYTHING GOOD 5105 8 ANYTHING SIMILAR 4723

9 ANYTHING USEFUL 4401

10 ANYTHING SPECIFIC 3971 11 ANYTHING NEGATIVE 3725 12 ANYTHING IMPORTANT 3245 13 ANYTHING INTERESTING 3241 14 ANYTHING EXTRA 3222 15 ANYTHING UNUSUAL 3172 16 ANYTHING SHORT 2440 17 ANYTHING SUSPICIOUS 2421 18 ANYTHING ILLEGAL 2362 19 ANYTHING SERIOUS 2340 20 ANYTHING FANCY 2182 21 ANYTHING POSITIVE 2106 22 ANYTHING LARGER 2078 23 ANYTHING BIGGER 1979 24 ANYTHING HIGHER 1934 25 ANYTHING OTHER 1732 26 ANYTHING SIGNIFICANT 1679 27 ANYTHING WORSE 1584 28 ANYTHING SMALLER 1572 29 ANYTHING MAJOR 1466 30 ANYTHING WORTHWHILE 1441 31 ANYTHING MEANINGFUL 1423 32 ANYTHING STUPID 1330 33 ANYTHING AVAILABLE 1113 34 ANYTHING CRAZY 1107 35 ANYTHING NICE 1100 36 ANYTHING LONGER 1092 37 ANYTHING BIG 1040 38 ANYTHING SUBSTANTIAL 1017 39 ANYTHING LOWER 1016 40 ANYTHING STRANGE 982 41 ANYTHING POSSIBLE 856 42 ANYTHING RELEVANT 823 43 ANYTHING FUN 814 44 ANYTHING UNTOWARD 776 45 ANYTHING WEIRD 776 46 ANYTHING CONCRETE 760 47 ANYTHING UNIQUE 747 48 ANYTHING VALUABLE 732 49 ANYTHING HEAVY 730 50 ANYTHING REAL 721 51 ANYTHING SEXUAL 703 52 ANYTHING GREAT 697 53 ANYTHING OBVIOUS 677 54 ANYTHING PHYSICAL 673 55 ANYTHING GREATER 652 56 ANYTHING PERSONAL 648 57 ANYTHING ADDITIONAL 632 58 ANYTHING DRASTIC 593 59 ANYTHING ODD 591 60 ANYTHING FUNNY 581 61 ANYTHING PRODUCTIVE 574 62 ANYTHING SWEET 573 63 ANYTHING COMPARABLE 571 64 ANYTHING OFFICIAL 558 65 ANYTHING INAPPROPRIATE 553 66 ANYTHING CREATIVE 552 67 ANYTHING SPECTACULAR 540 68 ANYTHING HELPFUL 536 69 ANYTHING SOLID 530 70 ANYTHING EXCITING 525 71 ANYTHING DANGEROUS 520 72 ANYTHING DEFINITIVE 514 73 ANYTHING OLDER 513 74 ANYTHING SUPER 513 75 ANYTHING DECENT 507 76 ANYTHING ABNORMAL 504 77 ANYTHING HEAVIER 497 78 ANYTHING PARTICULAR 497 79 ANYTHING SMALL 495 80 ANYTHING UNEXPECTED 469 81 ANYTHING GREEN 456 82 ANYTHING LIKE 456 83 ANYTHING STRONGER 452 84 ANYTHING CONSTRUCTIVE 431 85 ANYTHING TANGIBLE 429 86 ANYTHING HARMFUL 427 87 ANYTHING SUITABLE 404 88 ANYTHING IMAGINABLE 384 89 ANYTHING ORIGINAL 370 90 ANYTHING CRITICAL 360 91 ANYTHING EXTRAORDINARY 358 92 ANYTHING WORTHY 357 93 ANYTHING NECESSARY 355 94 ANYTHING TECHNICAL 352 95 ANYTHING SILLY 350 96 ANYTHING ELECTRICAL 349 97 ANYTHING NASTY 344 98 ANYTHING EXPENSIVE 335 99 ANYTHING COMPLICATED 328

100 ANYTHING COOL 327