Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having no legal force; invalid.
  • adjective Of no consequence, effect, or value; insignificant.
  • adjective Amounting to nothing; absent or nonexistent.
  • adjective Mathematics Of or relating to a set having no members or to zero magnitude.
  • transitive verb To make null.
  • noun Zero; nothing.
  • noun An instrument reading of zero.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not any; wanting; non-existent.
  • Void; of no legal or binding force or validity; of no efficacy; invalid.
  • Of no account or significance; having no character or expression; negative.
  • noun Something that has no force or meaning; that which is of a negative or meaningless character; a cipher, literally or figuratively.
  • noun Specifically In musical notation, the character 0, denoting
  • noun in thorough-bass, that the bass note over which it is placed is to be played alone, the other parts resting;
  • noun in the fingering for stringed instruments, that the note over which it is placed is to be played on an open string.
  • noun The raised part in nulling or nulled work. This when small resembles a bead; when longer, a spindle.
  • To annul; deprive of validity; destroy; nullify.
  • To form nulls, or into nulls, as in a lathe. See nulling.
  • To kink: said of a whalemen's line as it runs from the line-tub.
  • Zero in algebraic measure.
  • In math. logic, noting a propositional function when it is false for all values of x.
  • noun Specifically, one of the bids in the game of skat. Same as misère. See skat.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Something that has no force or meaning.
  • noun That which has no value; a cipher; zero.
  • noun (Physics.) a zero method. See under Zero.
  • adjective Of no legal or binding force or validity; of no efficacy; invalid; void; nugatory; useless.
  • adjective Having a value of zero.
  • adjective (Math.) Empty; having no members.
  • adjective (Computers) Unassigned or meaningless; -- a special value given to variables, especially pointers or logical variables, indicating that it is meaningless and cannot be used in computation. The actual value that is stored in memory to indicate the null condition may vary with the computer language used.
  • transitive verb obsolete To annul.
  • noun One of the beads in nulled work.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A non-existent or empty value or set of values.
  • noun Zero quantity of expressions; nothing.
  • noun computing the ASCII or Unicode character (␀), represented by a zero value, that indicates no character and is sometimes used as a string terminator.
  • noun computing the attribute of an entity that has no valid value.
  • noun One of the beads in nulled work.
  • adjective Having no validity, "null and void"
  • adjective insignificant
  • adjective absent or non-existent
  • adjective mathematics of the null set
  • adjective mathematics of or comprising a value of precisely zero
  • adjective genetics, of a mutation causing a complete loss of gene function, amorphic.
  • verb transitive to nullify

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a quantity of no importance
  • adjective lacking any legal or binding force

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French nul, from Old French, from Latin nūllus; see ne in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French nul, from Latin nullus.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word null.

Examples

  • Joomla libraries/joomla/application/helper. php 026 class JApplicationHelper 027 {038 function & getClientInfo ($id = null, $byName = false) 039 {093 $null = null; 094 return

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2009

  • Royko later declared the term null and void, saying Brown was very grounded in his futurism, but the term was forever attached to Brown, who has made it something of a badge of honor in making it clear he's not another hack politician.

    William Bradley: From Governator to Moonbeam William Bradley 2011

  • Royko later declared the term null and void, saying Brown was very grounded in his futurism, but the term was forever attached to Brown, who has made it something of a badge of honor in making it clear he's not another hack politician.

    William Bradley: From Governator to Moonbeam William Bradley 2011

  • Royko later declared the term null and void, saying Brown was very grounded in his futurism, but the term was forever attached to

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com William Bradley 2011

  • As we all know, "hip" now means you've seen Brad Pitt's latest movie, rendering the word null and dull, but there are still authentic hipsters.

    Michael Simmons: Beating Off the Squares 2008

  • Null - Using the keyword null will load the null reference into an expression.

    The Code Project Latest Articles 2009

  • But Daniel was saying that there's only one logical conclusion, and logical conclusions must stand up to the concept science calls the null hypothesis.

    De Facto Intelligent Design in Biology 2010

  • Provan: logical conclusions must stand up to the concept science calls the null hypothesis

    De Facto Intelligent Design in Biology 2010

  • If there is the levels of corruption that are being predicted, its possible that the elections could be called null and void.

    Live Blogging Election Night 2007

  • Well, because of a public records request, we were able to get our hands on, as well as the Fort Lauderdale "Sun-Sentinel" newspaper, a letter -- a letter that states back on December the 11th, written from Roy Black to the state attorney's office, asking for a pretrial intervention in which case there would be -- charges would be dropped, and there would be called null process.

    CNN Transcript Jan 23, 2004 2004

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Verbal use by astronauts:

    "(Buzz) Aldrin: Roger. The burn was on time. The residuals before nulling: minus 0.1, minus 0.4, minus 0.1, X and Z nulled to zero (Static) (Garbled) nulling (garbled). (Long Pause)"

    - 'The First Lunar Landing' transcribed by Eric M. Jones, hq.nasa.gov.

    October 8, 2008