all vs the

all

adv
  • A quotative particle, compare like. 

  • So much. 

  • Apiece; each. 

  • Wholly; entirely; completely; totally. 

pron
  • The only thing(s). 

  • Used after who, what, where, how and similar words, either without changing their meaning, or indicating that one expects that they cover more than one element, e.g. that "who all attended" is more than one person. (Some dialects only allow this to follow some words and not others.) 

  • Everything. 

  • Everyone. 

noun
  • Everything that one is capable of. 

  • The totality of one's possessions. 

adj
  • All gone; dead. 

det
  • Every individual or anything of the given class, with no exceptions (the noun or noun phrase denoting the class must be plural or uncountable). 

  • Throughout the whole of (a stated period of time; generally used with units of a day or longer). 

  • Only; alone; nothing but. 

the

adv
  • With a comparative or with more and a verb phrase, establishes a correlation with one or more other such comparatives. 

  • With a comparative, and often with for it, indicates a result more like said comparative. This can be negated with none. 

article
  • Introducing a singular term to be taken generically: preceding a name of something standing for a whole class. 

  • Used before an adjective, indicating all things (especially persons) described by that adjective. 

  • Used to indicate a certain example of (a noun) which is usually of most concern or most common or familiar. 

  • Added to a superlative or an ordinal number to make it into a substantive. 

  • Used before a body part (especially of someone previously mentioned), as an alternative to a possessive pronoun. 

  • When stressed, indicates that it describes an object which is considered to be best or exclusively worthy of attention. 

  • Definite grammatical article that implies necessarily that an entity it hints at is presupposed; something already mentioned, or completely specified later in that same sentence, or assumed already completely specified. 

  • Used before an object considered to be unique, or of which there is only one at a time. 

  • Used before a noun modified by a restrictive relative clause, indicating that the noun refers to a single referent defined by the relative clause. 

  • Used before a superlative or an ordinal number modifying a noun, to indicate that the noun refers to a single item. 

prep
  • For each; per. 

How often have the words all and the occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )