nichts

See also: Nichts

German

Etymology

From Middle High German niht.[1]

Alternative forms
  • nix (a very common colloquial pronunciation; frequently seen in informal writing)
  • nischt (dialectal, widely restricted to eastern Germany)

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /nɪçts/, /nixts/
  • Audio(file)

Pronoun

nichts n (indefinite pronoun)

  1. nothing
    Ich weiß, dass ich nichts weiß.
    I know that I know nothing.

Declension

Invariable. A following adjective is capitalized and declined as a neuter singular in the strong pattern. Thus nichts Neues (“nothing new”) in the nominative and accusative cases; nichts Neuem in the dative case.

A genitive form does not exist. It is paraphrased by means of the preposition von (“of”). After the prepositions statt, trotz, während, and wegen, the dative case is used instead: wegen nichts Wichtigem – “because of nothing important” (i.e. because of something unimportant).

References
  1. nichts in Kluge's Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, 1891

Further reading

Scots

Noun

nichts

  1. plural of nicht
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