sav vs svaki vs cijeli (all/every/whole)

English smears three different ideas across the words all, every, and whole, and lets context sort them out — all day, every day, the whole day are felt as near-synonyms. Croatian keeps the three ideas in three separate words and forces you to choose: sav for collective totality ("all of it, the whole mass"), svaki for distributive selection ("each one, taken individually"), and cijeli for entirety ("the whole single thing"). Picking the wrong one is not a small stylistic slip — it changes the meaning. The classic minimal set, svi dani / svaki dan / cijeli dan, packs all three contrasts into one noun and is worth burning into memory before anything else.

sav, sva, sve — "all" (collective totality)

sav means all in the sense of a complete collection or an entire mass taken together. It agrees with its noun in gender, number, and case, and — this is the key — it is plural when it gathers up countable things (svi ljudi, "all people") and singular when it sweeps up an uncountable mass (sav novac, "all the money"; sva voda, "all the water").

The neuter singular sve has a second life as the standalone pronoun "everything" (Sve je u redu, "Everything's fine"), and the masculine plural svi as "everyone" (Svi su otišli, "Everyone left").

svaki — "each / every" (distributive, ALWAYS singular)

svaki picks out the members of a set one at a time. It is distributive: it says "take each member separately, and the statement holds for each." Because it considers the items individually, svaki is grammatically singular — always. There is no plural svaki. You agree the noun and the verb in the singular even though, logically, you mean the whole set.

The contrast with sav/svi is real and meaningful. Svi studenti moraju predati esej ("All students must submit an essay") views the group collectively; Svaki student mora predati esej ("Every student must submit an essay") views them one by one. Both are correct Croatian, and a native speaker hears the difference: the plural is the headcount, the singular is the rule applied to each individual. English "all" vs "every" carries almost the same nuance — but English lets you say every students never, and all students freely, while Croatian additionally forces svaki to stay singular.

cijeli / čitav — "whole / entire" (one undivided thing)

cijeli (and its synonym čitav) means whole or entire — a single thing considered in its full extent, undivided. It is not about gathering members or distributing over them; it is about one object or stretch taken in its entirety. It declines like an ordinary adjective and agrees with its noun.

Cijeli and čitav are interchangeable in most contexts; čitav feels a touch more emphatic or colloquial ("the entire / the whole darn"), but both are standard.

The minimal set: svi dani / svaki dan / cijeli dan

This is the contrast to memorise. The same noun, dan ("day"), takes all three words with three different meanings:

So Svi dani u srpnju bili su vrući ("All the days in July were hot") counts the set; Trčim svaki dan ("I run every day") distributes the habit over each day; Čekao sam te cijeli dan ("I waited for you the whole day") describes one day in its full length. Three meanings, three words — and the difference between svaki dan (every day) and cijeli dan (all day) is exactly the kind of thing English speakers blur and Croatian does not.

Declension note

All three agree with their noun and inflect for case. sav has a slightly irregular pronominal declension (svega, svemu, svime…); svaki and cijeli/čitav follow the regular definite-adjective pattern. The full paradigms are on the declension of determiners page, and these words sit alongside the broader quantifiers.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• sav / sva / sve = "all" as a collective totality: plural for countable groups (svi ljudi), singular for uncountable masses (sav novac); neuter sve = "everything", plural svi = "everyone".
• svaki = "each / every", distributive and always singular — svaki dan, svaki student; never a plural *svaki dani.
• cijeli / čitav = "whole / entire", one undivided thing in its full extent: cijeli dan, čitavu noć.
• The memory anchor: svi dani (all the days, plural) vs svaki dan (every day, singular) vs cijeli dan (the whole day, singular).
• When you feel a pull toward a plural after svaki, you actually want svi (the plural of sav).