Word.ws English Dictionary

ex nihilo

Syllables: ex ni·hi·lo/ɛks ˈniː.əˌləʊ̯/US/ɛks ˈniː.əˌləʊ̯/

ex nihilo prepositional phrase: out of nothing.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Out of nothing.
    • This creation ex nihilo came into being in a manner completely opposed to the ordinary course of natural law.1996, Macy Nulman, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer, page 320

Origin of ex nihilo

Learned borrowing from Latin (creātiō) ex nihilō (“(creation) out of nothing”).

Questions about ex nihilo

What does ex nihilo mean?
Ex nihilo means out of nothing.
What part of speech is ex nihilo?
Ex nihilo is a prepositional phrase.
How do you pronounce ex nihilo?
Ex nihilo is pronounced /ɛks ˈniː.əˌləʊ̯/ (UK).

Words near ex nihilo in the dictionary

  1. ex gratia
  2. ex hypothesi
  3. ex juris
  4. ex libris
  5. ex negativo
  6. ex nihilo
  7. ex nihilo nihil fit
  8. ex nunc
  9. ex officio
  10. ex opere operato
  11. ex parte

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ex nihilo (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-ex nihilo.wav.

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