null adj : lacking any legal or binding force; "null and void" [syn: void] n : 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, aught, cipher, cypher, goose egg, naught, zero, zilch, zip]

English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ʌl

Etymology

From nul, from nullus.

Noun

1. A nonexistant or empty value or set of values.
2. Zero; nothing
3. the ASCII character hex"00"
4. the attribute of an entity that has no valid value

Adjective

1. Having no legal validity, "null and void"
2. insignificant
   • 1924, Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove:

     In proportion as we descend the social scale our snobbishness fastens on to mere nothings which are perhaps no more null than the distinctions observed by the aristocracy, but, being more obscure, more peculiar to the individual, take us more by surprise.

3. absent or nonexistant
4. of the null set
5. of or comprising a value of precisely zero
6. In the context of "genetics|of a mutation": causing a complete loss of gene function, amorphic.

Derived terms

• nullity

Verb

1. to nullify

Related terms

• annul

See also

• nil

Estonian

Numeral

null

1. zero

German

Numeral

null

1. zero

Norwegian

Numeral

null

1. zero

Noun

1. zero

1. zero (derogatory about a person)

Null is an English word meaning 'nothing' or without value or consequence. It is derived from the Latin word nullus meaning 'none'.

Null may refer to:

• Null (computer programming), a special value in computer programming
• Null, in law, having no legal validity. See Void (law)
• Null (mathematics), a zero value in several branches of mathematics
• /dev/null, the null device in Unix-like operating systems, equivalent to the NUL device on CP/M, DOS, and Windows operating systems
• Null (physics), a concept in electromagnetism and theoretical physics
• Null (SQL), a special marker and keyword in SQL
• Null allele (genetics), also see amorph
• Null character, an ASCII value of 00 commonly used as a terminator, separator or filler
• Null cipher, a ciphertext symbol
• Null hypothesis, a hypothesis in statistics
• Null morpheme, a concept in linguistics
• Null result, the absence of the expected result in a scientific experiment
• Null pointe, [fr] no points, "love" in tennis scoring
• KK Null, a Japanese musician
• The German word for zero
• The Null Corporation, is the current imprint for Nine Inch Nails.

Fiction

• Null, a character appearing in the Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops video game
• Nulls, worm-like remains of defeated characters in the animated program ReBoot
• Null, the Living Darkness, a Marvel Comics character
• Null replaces the word "cool" in the Dystopian novel, Feed
• Null, men-eating sentinents in the Downs-Lord Triptich books by John Whitbourn
• Nul, rulers of a Galactic Empire of which earth is a province, in Brian Aldiss's Bow Down to Nul

See also

• Nil
• Nul

aimless, bad, bare, barren, bland, blank, bleached, characterless, clear, designless, devoid, empty, existless, featureless, garbled, hollow, importless, inane, ineffective, ineffectual, inefficacious, insignificant, insipid, invalid, lacking, meaningless, minus, missing, negative, nonconnotative, nondenotative, nonexistent, null and void, phatic, purportless, purposeless, scrambled, senseless, unexisting, unmeaning, unrelieved, unsignificant, useless, vacant, vacuous, void, white, with nothing inside, without being, without content, worthless