Though Tom is young, he knows anything.

Question

I'd be happy if someone would answer my question. Thanks in advance.

Are the following 2 sentences correct? If so, what's the difference?

A: Though Tom is young, he knows everything.

B: Though Tom is young, he knows anything.

Yankee · Accepted Answer

I'd only accept A.
B sounds odd.

However, you could use the word 'anything' if you changed the wording a bit. For example:
Though Tom is young, he knows the answer to anything I ask.

Anonymous · Answer

-Hi, Yankee. Thank you for your answer. I think your model sentence is very good.

But how about this one?: Though Tom is young, he knows anything about computers. Is this OK?

Marius Hancu · Answer

Though Tom is young, he knows a bit about computers. (something, but not much)

Though Tom is young, he knows quite a bit about computers. (quite much)

Though Tom is young, he knows a lot about computers. (quite much)

Though Tom is young, he knows an awful lot about computers. (very much)

Yankee · Answer

Anonymous -Hi, Yankee. Thank you for your answer. I think your model sentence is very good.

But how about this one?: Though Tom is young, he knows anything about computers. Is this OK?

No, that still sounds odd to my ear. You could say this:
Though Tom is young, he knows anything there is to know about computers.

And you could probably get away with this:
Though Tom is young, he knows anything and everything about computers.

The last sentence would emphasize the fact that there is absolutely nothing he does not know about computers -- i.e. he knows absolutely everything about computers.

Though Tom is young, he knows anything.

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