Language Of Confusion: Ne-, Part II

Back looking at the Proto Indo European root ne-, which means not, so of course most of the words related to it have to do with negation.
 
First, null, which showed up in the mid sixteenth century, a few decades before nullify. It comes from the French nul, which is from the classical Latin nullus, which means none, and none is of course from ne-. As for nullify, the -ify part of it comes from facere, to do or make, and I know I’ve talked about that before, it’s the origin of stuff like factory and feat, among other things.
 
Unsurprisingly, nil is closely related, though it didn’t show up until 1833—before that, it was either nihil or nihilum, both of which are just Latin words for nothing. In Latin, it’s a mix of ne-, not, and hilum, thing. So nil is… nothing.
 
Then there’s annul, which showed up in the late fourteenth century from the Old French anuler and Late Latin annullare, to make into nothing. The a- comes from ad, to, and of course the rest is from nullus, so to annul is to nothing something. Plus we have annihilate, which in addition to being really annoying to spell, still has the hilum part of nothing. It showed up in the mid sixteenth century from the Medieval Latin annihilates, from the verb annihilare, which all mean to reduce to nothing. A- is again from ad, so annihilate is also to nothing something. It just didn’t get rid of the hil part.
 
We also have naught, another word I’ve done before but is being done again. It showed up in the mid fourteenth century meaning an evil act as well as a trifle, or in math, zero, and somewhere along the way it lost the evil part. It comes from the Old English nawiht, nothing, which is literally a mix of na, no, (which is from ne-) and wiht, being, creature, or thing. Naught is ALSO nothing. Nought has the exact same origin, too, we just for some reason changed the A to an O in modern English. And yes, naughty is also related. It showed up in the late fourteenth century meaning needy or having nothing as well as evil or immoral, but then it lost the nothing meaning and kept the evil one. It is yet another word from nawiht, it just evolved the other way.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
Dictionary of Medieval Latin
Orbis Latinus

The Language of Confusion: Nothing

I don’t think the etymology of “nothing” is much of a mystery. It’s no + thing. Not exactly a mind twister. But I thought it would be amusing to look into all the different ways we have to say “nothing”. Nil, zip, zero, zilch (z’s are popular, I guess).

Nothing

It comes from Old English, where it was naþing (that þ is called a thorn; it’s from back when we had a separate letter for the “th” sound) or naðinc(again, the ð is an unused letter, this one called eth). Both words are roughly the same and are a combination of nanand þing—basically, none and thing. And it’s interesting to note that none itself is another word combination, this time of no and one, making nothing short for “not one thing”. I also think it’s cool that while nothing has been around since the early thirteenth century, we only started using it as an adjective (i.e. “nothing like”) in 1961. Words! They’re still changing!

Nil

While nothing came from Germanic roots, nil comes from the ubiquitous Latin, where it does indeed mean nothing. The classical Latin nihilor nihilum is actually another combination, this one of ne (not) and hilum (small thing). Not a small thing—not anything at all.

Zip

We’re getting into slang here. Zip has a few other meanings, but as a synonym for nothing it first appeared in 1900 asstudent slang for a grade of zero. whatever students who came up with it chose zip is unknown. If I had to guess, I would assume it’s because it for some reason annoyed their parents.

Zilch

It showed up in 1966 and like most recent words, no one thought to write down where it came from. It’s apparently an actual German/Slavic name, but as to why it means nothing…no idea.

Naught

In Old English, another word for nothingwas nawiht. It’s a combination of na—no—and wiht—thing or being. Wiht has kind of fallen by the wayside these days, but you can see its vestiges in the word wight.

Aught

Kind of an interesting one since the nothing/zero meaning of it comes from naught, but it’s also a word in its own right(where it actually comes from the previously introduced wiht). The nothing meaning of the word is actually an accident, what’s known as “metanalysis”. Basically, it’s when we say “a nword” and change it to “an word”. English has done this more than once, changing “a napron” to “an apron” and “a nadder” to “an adder”. It also happens in reverse sometimes, too. For example, “a newt” was original “an ewt”.

See? Wasn’t this fun? : )

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary 

Wordcraft 

Omniglot 

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Orbis Latinus