A Word, Please: Can ‘either’ refer to more than one thing? Sometimes

“Every outfit I tried on was either too casual, too loud or too frumpy.”

A funny thing about language: When you use it without thinking, you usually do just fine. It’s only when you stop and question words, grammar and meaning that you realize you don’t understand some element of the language as well as you thought you did.

I was reminded of this recently when someone asked me about “either” to introduce three things, as it does in the sentence about the outfits. Doesn’t “either,” by definition, refer to a choice between exactly two things? A statement is either true or false. A protagonist is either good or bad. Your car either runs or it doesn’t.

So how can “either” set up three things?

Well, according to some people, it can’t. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage lists 10 grammar experts who, in the early 1900s, started saying it’s wrong to use “either” to refer to more than two things. Oddly, grammar experts in the mid- to late-1800s had no problem with it, but this new crop of scolds started a trend.

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There’s a flaw in their logic, as Merriam’s points out: The experts who say “either” must refer to only two things don’t take into account that it can be a pronoun, an adjective or a conjunction, and it works differently in each role.

In “Either road gets you there,” it’s modifying “road,” so it’s an adjective. In this role, “either” means there are just two things. So from “Either road gets you there,” you can rightly infer that you have only two roads to choose from.

“Either” is a pronoun when it’s the subject of a verb, as in “Either gets you there.” And when it’s a pronoun, “either” means you’re talking about two things, in this case, two roads.

But in “Every outfit was either too casual, too loud or too frumpy,” “either” is a conjunction because it’s working as a “function word,” as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary puts it. Their definition shows that this form of “either” is different from the pronoun and adjective forms: “Used as a function word before two or more coordinate words, phrases, or clauses joined usually by ‘or’ to indicate that what immediately follows is the first of two or more alternatives.”

See how “two or more” comes up twice in this definition? That’s why our sentence about outfits is OK: because the possibility of three or more things is baked right into this meaning of “either.”

A more common question about “either” is whether it can take a plural verb, as in “It was not a subject on which either of them were fond of dwelling.” Some people would say “were” is wrong there because “either” is singular and that, therefore, singular “was” is the only correct option. That’s a good policy. “Either” usually works best with a singular verb. But it can also take a plural verb when that fits your meaning best, as proven by the example above from “Sense and Sensibility” by Jane Austen.

The same question comes up a lot with “neither.” Does it require a singular verb, “Neither is coming on Tuesday”? Or can you use a plural verb: “Neither are coming on Tuesday”? Experts seem to agree that the singular is usually better, but when the plural seems more natural, it’s fine too.

Like “either,” “neither” can refer to three or more things, but it usually works with “nor” instead of “or”: This outfit is neither flattering nor comfortable.

But not always. Usage guides cite numerous examples of top writers using “or” with “neither,” including Jane Austen, who wrote in “Mansfield Park”: “… if a man is neither to take orders with a living or without …”

June Casagrande is the author of “The Joy of Syntax: A Simple Guide to All the Grammar You Know You Should Know.”