Nihility

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The state or fact of being nothing; nothingness, nullity; nonexistence. countable, uncountable

    "Paeans and even poems have been written to the esoteric nature of the smallest building blocks of matter: how they manifest as everywhere and nowhere, seem to have come out of emptiness, and at the ultimate level seem to be distilled from pure nihility."

  2. 2
    the state of nonexistence wordnet
  3. 3
    A nonexistent thing; nothing. countable, obsolete

    "Della Crusca says all past Actions are Nihilities; & that the immediate Instant is the whole of human Existence—A bad Accᵗ of it surely!"

Example

More examples

"Paeans and even poems have been written to the esoteric nature of the smallest building blocks of matter: how they manifest as everywhere and nowhere, seem to have come out of emptiness, and at the ultimate level seem to be distilled from pure nihility."

Etymology

From Renaissance Latin nihilitās, from Latin nihil (“nothing”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.