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#70417 05/18/02 07:30 PM
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Zip
Squat
Finig
Nada
Nothing
Zero

How else do we express nothing?


#70418 05/18/02 07:35 PM
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Finig?

Wherefrom did that come?

Zilch
Nichts
Goose egg

Variations on some of yours:
   Zippo
   Diddley-squat



#70419 05/18/02 07:47 PM
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Finig is a word in another language and so is finnig. But neither means nothing.

I've been using finig to mean nothing for a long time now, and today I learn from Faldage that I've been using a non-existent meaning for the word.

I'm going to submit it to the pseudo-dictionary site and beg them to include it out of pity.


#70420 05/18/02 08:59 PM
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doodley-squat

--Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions


#70421 05/18/02 10:16 PM
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It seems to my little pea bain that expressing nothing is a logical conundrum. How does one express if one doesn't express something? But, then, Hamlet's words come to mind:"...A sound made by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."


#70422 05/18/02 10:23 PM
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I have a note in my JDR® that says we know more about nothing than we do about everything. Has a barely legible reference to Scientific American scribbled in the lower left hand corner.


#70423 05/18/02 10:27 PM
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One must be able to express nothing, in order to have a contrast when one expresses something.

The introduction of the concept of zero was a crucial one in terms of advancing mathematics.. interestingly, the ancient Greeks almost certainly didn't think of it. The Mayans and the Indians did, though [independently]

alexis


#70424 05/18/02 10:33 PM
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I have a book somewhere about the zero and the effect of its introduction to western society. Fittingly it has a chapter Zero.


#70425 05/18/02 10:40 PM
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There's a fair bit about zero in a book I just finished, "The Calendar". You sort of need zero for decimals, and when you want to say that the year is 365.2564 days long [the sidereal year, that is, in the year 2000] it gets unwieldy without decimals!

We seem to have something of a paucity of nothing-expressions so far.

alexis


#70426 05/18/02 10:40 PM
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Fittingly it has a chapter Zero.Faldage

...and is the chapter a blank page?



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