[Ads-l] "a regular Bulgarian army" (1917)

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Sat Aug 20 17:38:27 UTC 2022


"Nix" meaning 'nothing, none' (from German "nichts") is the older sense in
English (OED3 1781), with other negative meanings derived from it (OED3 has
'no' from 1846 and 'cancel, reject' from 1903). The 'nothing' meaning is
uncommon now but was likely unremarkable in 1917.

On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 9:02 AM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Also interesting, to me at least, is the use of "nix" — which today and in
> my experience is only used as a verb or interjection of denial or refusal,
> partly synonymous with "no" —  where I would expect "nil", or a synonym
> such as "zero" or "nonexistent".
>
> MAM
>
> On Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 6:58 PM Nancy Friedman <wordworking at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > The volunteer archivist at the bay swimming and boating club I belong to
> > has a question about a phrase she came across in a July 1917 club
> document:
> >
> > “Our athletes will be lost in the shuffle among a regular Bulgarian army
> of
> > contestants, and their chances of showing or even getting mentioned in
> the
> > papers are practically nix.”
> >
> > Any ideas about what the phrase signified?
> >
>

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