Determiners – Can ‘Either’ Be Used for More Than Two Items?

determiners

The Judiciary also uses a special type of monitoring through the General Inspection Office and Bureaucratic Justice Court. Additionally, either of the three powers have internal supervision mechanisms.

"Either" in the above paragraph is used for more than two items (three powers). Is it grammatical?

Best Answer

You've asked two questions here; one in your title:

Can “either” be used for more than two items?

and one in the body of your question:

Is this use of “either” correct in the above paragraph?

Catija has (correctly, in my opinion) given an answer to the second question. I'd like to answer the first: It depends.

As one grammar blogger wrote:

When used as a conjunction, “either” implies one of two or more elements. However, if it’s an adjective (meaning “one and/or the other”) or a pronoun (meaning “the one or the other”), then “either” implies one of two only.

The Free Dictionary has a usage note:

The traditional rule holds that either should be used only to refer to one of two items, and that any is required when more than two items are involved: Any (not either) of the three opposition candidates still in the race would make a better president than the incumbent. But reputable writers have often violated this rule, and in any case it applies only to the use of either as a pronoun or an adjective.

As for those aforementioned "violations," you can find several of them by going to Google Books and searching for "any of the three". When I did that, I noticed that several of the hits were from the 19th century, which made me wonder if either of the three was not considered the grammatical misdemeanor a century or so ago that it is today, a theory that seems to be supported by this Ngram:

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