null

Noun · Adjective

Synonyms: nothing nil nix nada aught cipher cypher goose egg naught zero zilch zip

WordNet 3.0

Noun (1)

a quantity of no importance“it looked like nothing I had ever seen before”“reduced to nil all the work we had done”“we racked up a pathetic goose egg”“it was all for naught”“I didn't hear zilch about it”Synonyms: nothing nil nix nada aught cipher cypher goose egg naught zero zilch zip zippo

Adjective (1)

lacking any legal or binding force“null and void”Synonyms: void

Webster's Dictionary (GCIDE)

Null \Null\, v. t. [From null, a., or perh. abbrev. from annul.] To annul. [Obs.] --Milton. [1913 Webster]

Null \Null\, n. [Etymol. uncertain.] One of the beads in nulled work. [1913 Webster]

Null \Null\, a. [L. nullus not any, none; ne not + ullus any, a dim. of unus one; cf. F. nul. See No, and One, and cf. None.]

1.Of no legal or binding force or validity; of no efficacy; invalid; void; nugatory; useless. [1913 Webster]

Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, Dead perfection; no more.— Tennyson.[1913 Webster]

2.Having a value of zero; as, of null utility. [PJC]

3.(Math.) Empty; having no members; as, the null set. [PJC]

4.(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; as, an uninitialized pointer in "C" is given a null value. The actual value that is stored in memory to indicate the null condition may vary with the computer language used. [PJC]

Null \Null\, n.

1.Something that has no force or meaning. [1913 Webster]

2.That which has no value; a cipher; zero. --Bacon. [1913 Webster]

Null method (Physics.), a zero method. See under Zero. [1913 Webster]

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

null

<programming> A special value used in several languages to represent the thing referred to by an uninitialised pointer.

<database> A special value that may be stored in some database columns to represent an unknown, missing, not applicable, or undefined value. Nulls are treated completely differently from ordinary values when evaluating SQL expressions and there are several SQL constructs for dealing with nulls.

(2003-06-17)