She wasneither learned nor intelligent, but she contrived to dress both herself and her daughter out of a meagre jointure, supplying with her clever fingers what her purse could not buy;[…].
2025 June 19, Rami Kaminski, ““Otroverts” and why nonconformists often see what others can’t”, inBig Think[1]:
For most people, this sacrifice is made easily and instinctively. Not so for otroverts, who areneither willing nor able to passively adopt the social scripts that others do. To the otrovert, who is constantly engaged with the choices and consequences of their individual life, social norms follow a circular logic:[…]
According to traditional grammar,neither should always be construed as a singular (as in the example above). In practice, however, plural construction is often met with, especially when a specification withof follows:Neither of these shirtsis / are clean.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
2013 June 22, “T time”, inThe Economist[2], volume407, number8841, page68:
The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them[…]is often assumed to be the preserve of high-tech companies.[…] current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate[…] “stateless income”: profit subject to tax in a jurisdiction that isneither the location of the factors of production that generate the income nor where the parent firm is domiciled.
Neither is used to mean none of two or more. Although some suggest that using the wordneither with more than two items is incorrect, it has been commonly used to refer to more than two subjects since the 17th century.
Neither snownor rainnor heatnor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. - inscription onJames A. Farley Post Office Building, New York
A user suggests that this English entry be cleaned up, giving the reason:“This looks bad. In sentence 3 the pronoun has been mixed into this. And for the rest, what does it even try to say? What "number of the verb"?”.
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There is considerable variation in the number of the verb employed with this construction.
Examples:
“That woman was neither a collector nor an art critic, but she understood the meaning I meant to give that work.” —Marcelle Ferron
“Has anyone ever loved you so much that they tried to kill you, or perhaps sucked you down into a hole so that you had to kill them to get away? Yeah, me neither.” —Maynard James Keenan
“You can make a lot of money in this game. Just ask my ex-wives. Both of them are so rich that neither of their husbands work.” —Lee Trevino
“As if it were gold and could be neither good nor bad nor worth more nor worth less but must always be worth the same no matter what.” —Alex Miller
“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!” —Rudyard Kipling
“Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand, nor the Romans, nor the Jews, nor Judas, nor the twelve, nor the priests, nor the scribes, nor doomed Jerusalem itself understand what power is, understand what glory is, understand at all.” —Jesus Christ Superstar
