A friend recently asked for an interpretation of the following sentence:

“For every one year, the debt per capita rises $1139.”

She posed the question: Does the sentence unequivocally means the same as:

“For each additional year, the debt per capita increases by $1139″?

My Response: Yes, I believe it does mean this. Other ways of expressing the same thing: “For each additional year…” Or, “Every one year, every one year, every one year…etc.”

Definitions of every, which acts as an Determiner (specific kind of adjective):
1. “All of a countable group, without exception.” As: Every person in the room stood and cheered. (Those who stood and cheered are all countable). Or, Every third person in the room stood and cheered. (If 30 persons in the room, then 10 persons stood and cheered). See below.

2. Used with ordinal numbers to denote those items whose position is divisible by the corresponding cardinal number, or a portion of equal size to that set. As: Every third bead was red, and the rest were blue. The sequence was thus red, blue, blue, red, blue, blue etc.

3. Note: Decimation originally meant the execution of every tenth soldier in a unit.

Tags: adjective, cardinal, determiner, each, every, math question, ordinal, per capita