Word.ws English Dictionary

nil

/nɪl/

nil noun: nothing; zero.

Noun (1)

nil (usually uncountable, plural nils)

  1. (usually) Nothing; zero.
    • Sedatives, contrary to popular lay and medical opinion, are invaluable in those who are not aided by the simpler means. Bromides, barbital and its innumerable offspring may be used with success, their administration being supplemented with a word of warning as to the evasion of any advice from the...1928 December 15, Frank J. Hirschboeck, “Treatment of Functional Heart Disease”, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, volume 91, number 24, →DOI, page 1855
    • As to Aristotle's influence on him, we are left free to conjecture whatever seems to us most plausible. For my part, I should suppose it nil.1946, Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, I.19
  2. (usually) A score of zero
    • The football match ended in a nil-nil draw.

Determiner

nil

  1. No, not any.
    • But after two or three hours and nil results, you have to accept that the trail is cold and you can't justify that level of manpower.1982, Gavin Lyall, Conduct of Major Maxim, Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Noun (2) capitalized: NIL

NIL (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of nanoimprint lithography.
  2. (Canada, US, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of name, image, and likeness.
    • In states that have passed NIL-related laws – Alabama, Florida and Georgia, among others – athletes would be able to participate in NIL activities that are “consistent with the laws.”2021 June 28, Homero De la Fuente, “NCAA takes big step toward allowing athletes to profit from name, image or likeness”, in CNN

Examples of nil in a sentence

  • The danger of forming a habit is to my mind nil, except in the few instances in which patients have felt that if a little is good more is better.1928 December 15, Frank J. Hirschboeck, “Treatment of Functional Heart Disease”, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, volume...
  • [T]he overall freedom of a corpse is nil because a corpse is not someone to whom social and political liberty (or unfreedom) can ever correctly be ascribed.2003, Matthew H[enry] Kramer, “Freedom and Force”, in The Quality of Freedom, Oxford, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press...

All 18 example sentences with nil

Forms of nil

pluralnils

Plural of nil: nils

Origin of nil

Borrowed from Latin nīl, a contraction of nihil, nihilum (“nothing”). See nihilism, nihility.

Words formed from nil

Words that rhyme with nil

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about nil

What does nil mean?
Nil means nothing; zero.
How do you use nil in a sentence?
The danger of forming a habit is to my mind nil, except in the few instances in which patients have felt that if a little is good more is better.
What part of speech is nil?
Nil can be a noun or a determiner.
How do you pronounce nil?
Nil is pronounced /nɪl/.
What is the plural of nil?
The plural of nil is nils.

Words near nil in the dictionary

  1. nikujaga
  2. nikuman
  3. Nikumaroro
  4. Nikumbha
  5. Nikšić
  6. nil
  7. nil by mouth
  8. nil desperandum
  9. nil disease
  10. nil per os
  11. nil-

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nil (page history and authors); NIL (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-nil.wav.

Cite this entry: “nil.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nil. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.