Nothing
adj, adv, intj, noun, pron ·Common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 Something trifling, or of no consequence or importance. countable, uncountable
"- What happened to your face? - It's nothing."
- 2 a quantity of no importance; thing (object:), singular, negative pronoun; pronoun, thing, singular; quantifier: negative existential wordnet
- 3 A trivial remark especially in the term sweet nothings. countable, uncountable
- 4 A nobody (insignificant person). countable, uncountable
- 1 Completely unimportant. not-comparable
"Dallas scored on what had seemed until then like a nothing play."
- 2 Lacking effort or commitment. not-comparable
"The cricketer played a nothing shot."
- 1 Not at all; in no way. archaic, not-comparable
"Nothing too much out of the ordinary."
- 1 in no respect; to no degree wordnet
- 1 Not any thing; no thing. indefinite, pronoun
"Don't just say nothing. Tell me what's going on."
- 2 An absence of anything, including empty space, brightness, darkness, matter, or a vacuum. indefinite, pronoun
- 1 Never mind; it's not important; forget what I said.
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Nothing is beautiful but the truth."
Etymology
From Middle English nothyng, noon thing, non thing, na þing, nan thing, nan þing, from Old English nāþing, nān þing (“nothing”, literally “not any thing”), equivalent to no + thing. Compare Old English nāwiht (“nothing”, literally “no thing”), Swedish ingenting (“nothing”, literally “not any thing, no thing”).
Related phrases
More for "nothing"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.