Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary - neither

Frequency: The word is one of the 1500 most common words in English. 1. You use neither in front of the first of two or more words or expressions when you are linking two or more things which are not true or do not happen. The other thing is introduced by ‘nor’. Professor Hisamatsu spoke neither English nor German... The play is neither as funny nor as disturbing as Tabori thinks it is. CONJ 2. You use neither to refer to each of two things or people, when you are making a negative statement that includes both of them. At first, neither man could speak. DET • Neither is also a quantifier. Neither of us felt like going out. QUANT-NEG • Neither is also a pronoun. They both smiled; neither seemed likely to be aware of my absence for long. PRON 3. If you say that one person or thing does not do something and neither does another, what you say is true of all the people or things that you are mentioning. I never learned to swim and neither did they... Britain does not agree and neither do Denmark, Portugal and Ireland. = nor CONJ 4. You use neither after a negative statement to emphasize that you are introducing another negative statement. (FORMAL) I can’t ever recall Dad hugging me. Neither did I sit on his knee. = nor CONJ 5. If you say that something is neither here nor there, you mean that it does not matter because it is not a relevant point. ‘I’d never heard of her before I came here.’—‘That is neither here nor there.’ PHRASE: v-link PHR