More than a dozen words that mean nothing (or almost nothing)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Surprisingly there are over a dozen words for nothing: aught, bupkes, bupkis, cipher, cypher, goose-egg, nada, naught, nil, nought, nowt, null, void, zero, zilch, zip. And there also are a dozen for almost nothing: diddly-squat, driblet, hoot, iota, jot, mite, scintilla, tittle, trace, vestige, whit, whoop.

 

Greek philosophers scratched their heads over how there could be a word for zero, since it was nothing. Mathematicians found it useful though. Back on April 3, 2011 I blogged about Stories in words and music: folk edition and mentioned Townes Van Zandt, who wrote a song titled Nothin’. In the Seinfeld TV show, Jerry and George pitch NBC on ‘a show about nothing.’