sb. or pron.
1. comb. of ANY and BODY in the sense of person (as in nobody, somebody): Any person, any one. It has all the varieties of use noted under ANY a. 1, as in ‘Does anybody know? I do not see anybody. Anybody can do that.’ Formerly written as two words: any body; but, when so written now, body has its ordinary sense: ‘the velocity with which any body moves.’
1490. Caxton, Eneydos, xxii. 81. Without to notyfye them to eny body lyuynge.
1598. Shaks., Merry W., I. iv. 4. If he doe … finde any body in the house.
1813. Miss Austen, Pride & Prej., vi. 194. Any body who would hear her.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., III. 13. Impossible to make an arrangement that would please every body, and difficult to make an arrangement that would please any body.
1876. J. Parker, Paraclete, II. 385. Anybody can attach himself to a mob.
2. With qualitative force; sometimes made a regular substantive with pl.
a. In interrogative or hypothetical expressions, laudatory: A person of some rank or worth, ‘a somebody’ as opposed to ‘a nobody.’ b. In affirmative expressions, depreciatory: A person of any sort, an ordinary person, as opposed to ‘a somebody.’
1826. Disraeli, Viv. Grey, II. xv. 78. Everybody was there who is anybody.
1858. (Dec. 21) Bright, Sp. (1876), 306. Two or three anybodies.
