кожен

The pronoun кожен is the standard way to express 'every' in Ukrainian. It is highly frequent and used in all styles of speech.

1. Forms and Agreement
It follows the declension of hard adjectives (like добрий). The masculine nominative has two forms: кожен (short) and кожний (long). In modern Ukrainian, кожен is much more common.

• Masculine: кожен / кожний
• Feminine: кожна
• Neuter: кожне
• Plural: кожні (used with plural-only nouns like двері or with numerals, e.g., кожні п'ять хвилин)

2. Usage with Nouns
Unlike English 'every', which is always singular, or 'all' (всі), which is plural, кожен almost always takes a singular noun in Ukrainian, except in the specific plural cases mentioned above. You use it when you want to distribute an action or quality to every individual member of a set. Note the difference from усякий (any/every kind of), which focuses on variety rather than totality.

3. Time Expressions
For frequency, you can use кожен + a time noun (e.g., кожен день - every day). Recurring time is also frequently expressed using the genitive case (e.g., кожного дня, кожного ранку, кожного разу). This is often interchangeable with the prefix що- (e.g., щодня), though кожен is more emphatic about the individual days. Note that while кожен день is common in everyday speech, щодня is the stylistically preferred choice in edited Ukrainian.

4. Case Agreement
Because it acts as a determiner, it must change its ending to match the case of the noun. For example, in the accusative case, it becomes кожного for animate masculine nouns or кожну for feminine nouns. For inanimate masculine nouns, the accusative remains кожен or кожний (e.g., Я читаю кожен текст). For neuter nouns, it remains кожне (e.g., кожне слово). For plural nouns, it is кожні for inanimate (e.g., кожні двері) and кожних for animate. Other common cases include the dative (кожному) and the locative (на/у кожному).

5. Standalone Usage
Кожен can also be used independently (without a noun) to mean 'everyone' or 'everybody' (e.g., Кожен знає це). A highly frequent syntactic pattern is Кожен, хто... (Everyone who...), for example: Кожен, хто вивчає мову... (Everyone who studies the language...). Additionally, in literature and set phrases, you might encounter the parallel locative form кожнім instead of кожному (e.g., на кожнім кроці - at every step). The -ім ending is a standard parallel locative ending available to all masculine and neuter adjectives and pronouns.

6. Partitive Construction
A highly frequent pattern is кожен з + genitive plural (e.g., кожен з нас - each of us, кожен із студентів - each of the students). This is a core syntactic pattern used to single out individuals from a specific group.

7. The Negative Counterpart: Жоден
The negative equivalent of кожен is жоден (not a single one / none). It follows the exact same hard-adjective declension pattern and also has a dual-form masculine nominative: жоден (short, more common) and жодний (long). Like кожен, it agrees with the noun in gender, number, and case (e.g., жодна людина - not a single person).