Sundry means various, and of several kinds. Sundry items, sundry expenses, all and sundry.
It survives mainly in all and sundry, meaning everybody without distinction, and in accounting, where sundries is the heading for small items too various to list. It is formal and slightly dated. Note that the word comes from the same root as sunder, meaning to separate, so sundry things are separate ones.
1adjectivesundryVarious, and of several kinds.
“The drawer was full of sundry items: keys, coins, old receipts and batteries.”
sundry is a quality of variety.
Middle English sondri comes from Old English syndrig, separate, from the root of sunder. Asunder comes from the same separating.
Proto-Indo-European
*senH- — apart; for oneself; without
Proto-Germanic
*sundraz — alone, isolated; separate
Old English
syndriġ — alone, distinct, separate, single; sundry, various; concerning a single person, own, particular, peculiar, private; exceptional, remarkable, set apart, special; (distributive) one each
Middle English
sondri
English, today
sundry
Built from
The adjective is derived from Middle English sondri, sondry, syndry (“individually; occasionally; separately; variously”)sindre, sindrey, sindri, sindrie, sindry, sondery, sondrẹ̄, sondree, sondrei, sondrey, sondrie, sondry, sondrye, sonndry, soondry, soundri, soundrie, soundry, sum-dri, sunderi, sundery, sundrei, sundrey, sundri, sundrie, sundrii, sundry, syndre, (Early Middle English) sindri, sindriȝ, from Old English syndriġ (“alone, distinct, separate, single; sundry, various; concerning a single person, own, particular, peculiar, private; exceptional, remarkable, set apart, special; (distributive) one each”)sindrig, syndrie, syndryg, (Northumbria) suindrig, from sundor (“differently; privately; separate, separately”) (from Proto-Germanic sundraz (“alone, isolated; separate”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European senH- (“apart; for oneself; without”)) + -iġ (“suffix forming adjectives”). The English word is analysable as sunder + y. The noun and pronoun are derived from the adjective. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA