Adjacent Words

nil definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a quantity of no importance; "it looked like nothing I had ever seen before"; "reduced to nil all the work we had done"; "we racked up a pathetic goose egg"; "it was all for naught"; "I didn't hear zilch about it" [syn: nothing, nil, nix, nada, null, aught, cipher, cypher, goose egg, naught, zero, zilch, zip, zippo]

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: Latin, nothing, contraction of nihil, from Old Latin nihilum, from ne- not + hilum trifle — more at no Date: 1833 nothing, zero • nil adjective

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. nothing; no number or amount (esp. as a score in games). Etymology: L, = nihil nothing

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Nil Nil [See Nill, v. t.] Will not. [Obs.] --Chaucer.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Nil Nil, n. & a. [L., a contr. of nihil.] Nothing; of no account; worthless; -- a term often used for canceling, in accounts or bookkeeping. --A. J. Ellis.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. Nil means the same as zero. It is usually used to say what the score is in sports such as rugby or football. (BRIT) They beat Argentina one-nil in the final. NUM 2. If you say that something is nil, you mean that it does not exist at all. Their legal rights are virtually nil... = non-existent