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A distributive pronoun considers members of a group separately, rather than collectively.
They include either, neither and others.
- "to each his own" — 'each2,(pronoun)' Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary (2007)
- "Men take each other's measure when they react." — Ralph Waldo Emerson[1]
Besides distributive pronouns, there are also distributive determiners (also called distributive adjectives). The pronouns and determiners often have the same form:
- Each went his own way (each used as a pronoun, without an accompanying noun)
- Each man went his own way (each used as a determiner, accompanying the noun man)
- Each of the answers is correct (each used as a pronoun, with an accompanying prepositional phrase of the answers)
Biblical Hebrew
A common distributive idiom in Biblical Hebrew used an ordinary word for man, 'ish (איש). Brown Driver Briggs only provides four representative examples—Gn 9:5; 10:5; 40:5; Ex 12:3.[2] Of the many other examples of the idiom in the Hebrew Bible, the best known is a common phrase used to describe everyone returning to their own homes. It is found in 1 Samuel 10:25 among other places.[3]
- איש לביתו
- ... 'ish l'beyto.
- ... a man to his house. [literal]
- ... each went home. [sense]
This word, 'ish, was often used to distinguish men from women. "She shall be called Woman (אשה) because she was taken out of Man (איש)," is well known,[4] but the distinction is also clear in Gn 19:8; 24:16 and 38:25 (see note for further references).[5] However, it could also be used generically in this distributive idiom (Jb 42:11; I Ch 16:3).[6]
Greek
The most common distributive pronoun in classical Greek was hekastos (ἕκαστος, each).
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