the.com/nil
Zero's shyer cousin — the value that means 'nothing here' without making a scene.
means A word for zero or nothing at all, especially the absence of a score or quantity.
from From Latin nil, itself a contraction of nihil ('nothing'), which Romans built from ne- ('not') plus hilum, a tiny word for a trifling little thing — possibly the whisker on a bean. Shrink 'not even a bean-whisker' down over centuries and you get the clipped, unassuming 'nil' we use today.
- origin
- latin nihil, shortened by people in a hurry
- programming
- nil crashes more apps than bad logic does
- cricket use
- british scoreboards prefer it to plain zero
- not null
- some languages insist nil and null differ deeply