How to say "We ate everything" in Japanese?


How to say "We ate everything" (without the noun expressing what has been
eaten, or read, or learnt, etc.) in Japanese?

Here 'everything' can have any meanings, from "Every type of food available",
to "All the food given to us", to "All the food that existed". (Thanks
istrasci for this precision request)

In my understanding, "everything" is 全部. But from the examples I found, I feel
it must be used together with the object it refers to, as for instance:
花の名を全部言った.

On the other hand, machine translation services gives 全部 **or** 何でも for 'We
ate everything' (my dictionary translates the latter as 'anything',
'everything' or everything).

Responses on some interactive language learning website seem to indicate that
全部 and 何でも are not exactly the same[
[1](https://hinative.com/questions/19782593),
[2]](https://hinative.com/questions/15922307).




I don't think there's any particular need to explicitly specify an object when
using 全部.. (I'm not a native speaker but) to my ear, just saying 全部食べた (or
全て食べた) sounds perfectly normal/reasonable to express this sort of thing.

I think you're right that 全部 and 何でも are not really the same, though. 全部
basically means "the entirety of (something)". 何でも means more "without regard
to what it is", so for example, I would personally translate the following
sentences as:

  * 全部食べた -- "(We) ate all of it" / "(We) ate everything (that was there)"
  * 何でも食べた -- "(We) ate _anything and everything_ " / "(We) ate whatever we could find (without caring what it was)"




I don't think there's any particular need to explicitly specify an object when
using 全部.. (I'm not a native speaker but) to my ear, just saying 全部食べた (or
全て食べた) sounds perfectly normal/reasonable to express this sort of thing.

I think you're right that 全部 and 何でも are not really the same, though. 全部
basically means "the entirety of (something)". 何でも means more "without regard
to what it is", so for example, I would personally translate the following
sentences as:

  * 全部食べた -- "(We) ate all of it" / "(We) ate everything (that was there)"
  * 何でも食べた -- "(We) ate _anything and everything_ " / "(We) ate whatever we could find (without caring what it was)"

