English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Does the following sentence
It is not good for all men here.
mean
1) It is not good for anyone here.
or
2) It is good for some of them, while not good for others.
I know I can use
It is not good for any man here
to precisely express the first meaning. But what's the meaning for the original sentence exactly ? Does it matter if it changes a bit like
It is not even good for all men here.
The first option, "It is not good for anyone here", is the correct one. This sounds like a very formal statement, as "for all men" is not a construction which is generally used. "All men" probably includes both men and women, otherwise the phrase would be "it is not good for men here".
"It is not even good for all men here" is a very strange sentence. With a small change, it could be the second sentence of a series, where the first would be "It is not good for men here", followed by "It is not even good for women here".
