None

How to spell none

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce none

What does none mean?

1. pronounNot any; not one person or thing of those referred to.
2. adverbTo no extent; not at all (used before 'the' with a comparative).

None in a sentence

• pronoun

  None of the applicants met the salary requirement.

• adverb

  After the long meeting she was none the wiser about the new policy.

• pronoun

  We checked every till, but none of the cash was missing.

• adverb

  The refund came late, and he was none too pleased about the delay.

Where does none come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

None comes straight from Old English nan, a contraction of ne an, which literally meant 'not one'. The first element ne was the ordinary Old English word for 'not', and an was the ancestor of our modern 'one', so the whole word simply announced the absence of even a single thing. This made it a close cousin of the parallel form 'no' (Old English nan also shortened before nouns), and it sits in the same family as 'never' (ne plus ever) and 'neither'. The word has been in continuous English use for well over a thousand years, which is why it is so short and irregular. The spelling trap is purely the silent partner: 'none' sounds identical to 'nun', the member of a religious community, a word that arrived separately from Latin nonna, so writers must lean on meaning rather than sound to choose correctly.

How the word is built

• ne- (not)
• one (a single thing); Old English nan from ne an, literally 'not one'

Words that sound like none

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• nun: A woman who has taken vows and lives in a religious community, usually in a convent.