11/23/2023 0 Comments Anytime meaningReview: prepositions are words that come before nouns to describe a location in relation to another noun (e.g., to, in, at, on, with, from). A hard and fast rule of adverbs is that you can’t use a preposition in front of them. ![]() What words are you using around it? The correct usage of anytime or any time depends on the words you choose to use around it. Using the same sentence from above, a speaker might say, “I can stop playing video games any time I want.” This type of phrasing could allude to them saying any of the times they choose to play video games could be their last when they want it to be. You can ask the question, “Which time?” to which the answer would be, “Any.” While any is a vague adjective, it’s an adjective nonetheless. Any is an adjective because it describes time. Let’s break this down so it makes more sense. In contrast, “any time” is two words and functions as an adjective and a noun together. An example of this is saying, “I can stop playing video games anytime I want.” The speaker is saying they can stop playing video games whenever they choose. “Anytime” is an adverb that means “whenever” or “at any time” and modifies a verb by describing when you can perform it. Here’s a short review of adverbs: an adverb is a word or phrase that modifies an adjective, verb, or another adverb. Nouns, verbs, and adjectives are relatively basic parts of speech, but it can all get a little more confusing when we start talking about adverbs, prepositions, and others. Verbs show actions, nouns show who or what is committing the action, and adjectives describe the noun committing the action. Sentences are made up of various parts of speech that each play a role in conveying your message. ![]() So, why bother? If you want to stop here and keep life simple-great! But if you’re curious about when it’s okay to use the one-word version and why, read on. Sure, you can use the one-word version, anytime, correctly in some cases-but it comes with more rules. It’s appropriate for both formal and informal writing and grammatically fits every scenario. That’s because any time is always an acceptable spelling in every situation. Is there a right and wrong answer? Yes, but if you want to keep this very simple, just always use the two-word version: any time. In response to the original questioner's concern that "the words seem to conflict and are sort of nebulous", the response is that "any time now" is just an idiom-while its meaning is related to the words, the meaning of the whole phrase is not entirely deducible from the words themselves-it has a special meaning that must be memorized.Elevate your writing with real-time, intelligent assistance Learn More It would be out of place in formal writing. Nearly all the instances from the Corpus of Contemporary American English are from fiction and the spoken corpus. "Any time now" is a pretty informal, mostly spoken phrase. Just plain "soon" is much more neutral and could refer to any upcoming timeframe, depending on context. ![]() To me, there is more of an urgent sense of anticipation or expectation with "any time now" than with synonyms like "soon" that is, if someone you says "any time now" you might expect the event to occur during the conversation or very soon. The other answers here give a good definition of "any time now" as "imminent" or "soon", but there are a few things I wanted to add: The corpus is most useful for understanding how "any time now" is used in this sense - it often has a connotation of impatient waiting (like hoping for the cookies to arrive soon), or a sense of anticipation, not always pleasant: "Any time now" appears in COCA 73 times "anytime now" in COCA, 24 when looking at categories such as fiction, "any time now" is still the winner, but the difference is negligible. There does not seem to be a strong convention about when to write "any time now" as one or two words. ![]() Note that "anytime" is an alternative and you may see the similar expression anytime soon written with "anytime" as one word. It looks as if this expression is mainly used in American English, and any time now (see 12) may more often be written with "any time" as two words. "Some time soon, Nana will show up with the cookies." "Any time now" means that you don't know the exact time, but that you expect it to happen very soon momentarily.
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