Nonetheless

How to spell nonetheless

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce nonetheless

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nonetheless mean?

1. adverbIn spite of what has just been said; nevertheless.

Nonetheless in a sentence

• The figures were disappointing; nonetheless the board approved the budget.

• The journey was long and tiring, but it was nonetheless worth every mile.

Where does nonetheless come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a compression of the older three-word phrase 'none the less', which has been used in English since the medieval period. Each part comes from native Old English: 'none' descends from 'nan', meaning 'not one' or 'not any', which itself fused 'ne' (not) with 'an' (one); 'the' here is the old adverbial 'thy', a degree word meaning 'by that much'; and 'less' comes from 'lǣs', meaning 'smaller in amount'. Put together the phrase literally meant 'not any the smaller for that', in other words 'this fact does not reduce the truth of what follows'. Over time writers ran the three words together into the single adverb 'nonetheless', a parallel formation to 'nevertheless'. The fused spelling is exactly the trap: people remember the separate words and sometimes break it back into 'none the less' or insert stray spaces, when the standard single word keeps all three elements locked together with a single 'n' joining 'none' to 'the'.

How the word is built

• none (not any, from Old English nan)
• the (the, used as an adverb of degree)
• less (smaller in amount, from Old English lǣs)