Nihilism

:This article is about the philosophical position. For the Russian political and revolutionary movement, see Nihilist movement.

Etymological origins

The term comes from Latin nihil, meaning "not anything". The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1817 as its earliest use in English, and Alain Rey's Dictionnaire historique de la langue française (rev. ed. 1995) gives 1787 as the first use of the word in French, noting that nihiliste was used in 1761, though in a religious sense of 'heretic' that is now obsolete. Rey also argues that the Russian equivalent nigilizm that appeared in 1829 was an impulse to penetration of the term into modern language.

Related Topics:
Latin - Oxford English Dictionary - 1817 - 1787 - 1761 - 1829

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The Latin indefinite pronoun nihil ('nothing') is a reduced form of nihilum, a term that derives from ne-hilom an emphatic form of the negation ne by means of hilum, meaning 'the slightest amount' and of uncertain origin.

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