Word.ws English Dictionary

having nothing on

having nothing on is the present participle and gerund of have nothing on.

Meaning of have nothing on

Verb

have nothing on (third-person singular simple present has nothing on, present participle having nothing on, simple past and past participle had nothing on)

  1. (US, transitive) To be short of accusatory evidence against (a person).
    • Relax. The cops have nothing on us. All they can prove is that we were in the same town on the same day.
  2. (transitive) To lack an advantage over, to not be in a better position than, to be nonsuperior to.
    • His Mustang has nothing on her Corvette. [ = both cars are fast, and his cannot beat hers, although perhaps her car is not much faster (ambiguous)]
    1. (sometimes, transitive, via understatement) To be considerably inferior to.
      • Even the quickest street-legal cars in town have nothing on a Top Fuel dragster. [ = understated sense: a Top Fuel dragster is considerably quicker]

Questions about having nothing on

What is having nothing on the present participle and gerund of?
Having nothing on is the present participle and gerund of have nothing on.

Words near having nothing on in the dictionary

  1. having no idea
  2. having no time for
  3. having no use for
  4. having none of it
  5. having none of something
  6. having nothing on
  7. having nothing to lose
  8. having off
  9. having on
  10. having one foot on a banana peel
  11. having one more time

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: having nothing on (page history and authors); have nothing on (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “having nothing on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/having_nothing_on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.