Zilch

//zɪlt͡ʃ// adj, name, noun, verb, slang

adj, name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A nobody: a person who is worthless in importance or character. archaic, countable, informal

    "President Henry P. Zilch. Chairman of the Board Charles D. Zilch. Treasurer Otto Zilch."

  2. 2
    a quantity of no importance; thing (object:), singular, negative pronoun; pronoun, thing, singular; quantifier: negative existential wordnet
  3. 3
    Nothing, zero. informal, uncountable

    "Her search for decent home-made winter clothes came up with zilch, so she had to get imported stuff."

Verb
  1. 1
    To cause to score nothing, to thoroughly defeat. US, informal

    "We zilched them on that rubber."

Adjective
  1. 1
    No, zero, non-existent. US, informal, not-comparable

    "Zilch, adj. Nothing, zero..."

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname from German.

Synonyms

All synonyms
ciphernothingnothingzeroabsolute zeroalso-ran

Example

More examples

""How many questions did you get right?" "Zilch.""

Etymology

Etymology 1

Probably from Joe Zilch, a placeholder name (compare John Doe) used by Nunnally Johnson in his column in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1923; in turn from Joe Zilch, an unseen character referenced in comedian Frank Tinney's stage routine. Compare the rare German surname Zilch.

Etymology 2

From German Zilch. Found in America since at least the 1860s. As a 1930s placeholder surname of uncertain etymology, the eventual etymon of zilch.

Related phrases

non existent

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