Word.ws English Dictionary

ex nihilo nihil fit

ex nihilo nihil fit phrase: nothing comes from nothing; out of nothing, nothing is produced.

Phrase

ex nihilo nihil fit

  1. Nothing comes from nothing; out of nothing, nothing is produced.

Forms of ex nihilo nihil fit

alternative formex nihilo nihil

Origin of ex nihilo nihil fit

Learned borrowing from Latin ex nihilō nihil fit (literally “out of nothing is made nothing”), from De rerum natura by Lucretius.

Questions about ex nihilo nihil fit

What does ex nihilo nihil fit mean?
Ex nihilo nihil fit means nothing comes from nothing; out of nothing, nothing is produced.
What part of speech is ex nihilo nihil fit?
Ex nihilo nihil fit is a phrase.

Words near ex nihilo nihil fit in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ex nihilo nihil fit (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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