Nowhere

How to spell nowhere

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nowhere

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nowhere mean?

1. adverbIn, at, or to no place; not anywhere.
2. nounA remote, isolated, or insignificant place.

Nowhere in a sentence

• adverb

  The missing keys were nowhere to be found in the office.

• noun

  The cabin sat in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest town.

• adverb

  After hours of driving we seemed to be getting nowhere at all.

• noun

  The startup came out of nowhere to dominate the market.

Where does nowhere come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Nowhere is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English nahwær, which combined na, meaning 'no' or 'not', with hwær, meaning 'where'. From its earliest recorded use it carried the plain sense of 'in no place', and the spelling simply welds the negative element to the locational word, just as 'nobody' and 'nothing' fuse 'no' with 'body' and 'thing'. Because the second half is the everyday word 'where', the spelling is fully transparent once you notice it, and the silent 'w' in 'where' is the only mild trap. Over the centuries it also developed the idiomatic noun sense seen in 'the middle of nowhere', describing a remote or insignificant place. Its close cousins 'anywhere', 'somewhere', and 'everywhere' all share the same -where building block, which is a handy memory anchor.

How the word is built

• no- (not any)
• where (in what place)