Word.ws English Dictionary

nulliverse

nulliverse noun: the world, regarded as having no rationality or rules.

Noun

nulliverse (plural nulliverses)

  1. The world, regarded as having no rationality or rules.
    • If the world cannot be rational in my sense, in the sense of unconditional surrender, I refuse to grant that it is rational at all. It is pure incoherence, a chaos, a nulliverse, to whose haphazard sway I will not truckle.1882 April, William James, “On Some Hegelisms”, in Mind, volume VII, number 1, page 192
    • If rationality be in it at all, it must be in it throughout ; if irrationality be in it anywhere, that also must pervade it throughout. It must be wholly rational or wholly irrational, pure universe or pure multiverse or pure nulliverse ; and reduced to this violent alternative, no one's choice...1909, William James, A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures to Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy, Longmans, Green, and Company, page 68

Examples of nulliverse in a sentence

  • It must be wholly rational or wholly irrational, pure universe or pure multiverse or pure nulliverse ; and reduced to this violent alternative, no one's choice ought long to remain doubtful.1909, William James, A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures to Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy, Longmans...
  • You admit yourself that I am only a pale wild girl with gipsy hair in a deathless ballad, in a nulliverse, in Rattner's ‘menald world’ where the only principle is random variation.1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle:
  • Now, why should an author not create a “nulliverse” to represent “oneirologically” the contents of his own mind?1969 August 2, John Updike, “Books: Van Loves Ada, Ada Loves Van”, in The New Yorker, volume 45, number 24, page 67:

Forms of nulliverse

pluralnulliverses

Origin of nulliverse

From null + -i- + -verse, coined by William James.

Questions about nulliverse

What does nulliverse mean?
Nulliverse means the world, regarded as having no rationality or rules.
How do you use nulliverse in a sentence?
It must be wholly rational or wholly irrational, pure universe or pure multiverse or pure nulliverse ; and reduced to this violent alternative, no one's choice ought long to remain doubtful.
What part of speech is nulliverse?
Nulliverse is a noun.
What is the plural of nulliverse?
The plural of nulliverse is nulliverses.

Words near nulliverse in the dictionary

  1. nullitetrasomic
  2. nullities
  3. nullity
  4. nullius filius
  5. nullius in bonis
  6. nulliverse
  7. nulliverses
  8. nullizygosity
  9. nullizygote
  10. nullizygotes
  11. nullizygous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nulliverse (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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