Usage Note: Anyone and anybody are singular terms and always take a singular verb. · The one-word form anyone is used to mean "any person." The two-word form any one is used to mean "whatever one (person or thing) of a group." Anyone may join means that admission is open to everybody. Any one may join means that admission is open to one person only. When followed by of, only any one can be used: Any one (not anyone) of the boys could carry it by himself. · Anyone is often used in place of everyone in sentences like She is the most thrifty person of anyone I know. This usage is frowned upon by a majority of the Usage Panel, with 60 percent rejecting it in 2001, almost the same percentage that rejected it in 1964, when 64 percent rejected it. The misgivings about the usage may stem from the fact that the phrase of anyone can be dropped with essentially no change in meaning. See Usage Note at they.