nullify

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin nūllificō (“to esteem lightly, despise”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} a post-classical Latin verb used in the early 3rd century by Tertullian, quoting the Old Latin Bible.^[2] Barnhart and Klein gloss it literally as "to make nothing" or "to reduce to nothing".^[3][6] It is formed from nūllus (“not any, none”), the source of null, and -ficō, from faciō (“to make, do”);^[4][6][5][2] Barnhart supposes a lost adjective *nūllificus (“making null”) between them.^[3] Etymonline traces faciō to Proto-Indo-European *dhe- (“to set, put”).^[4] The Shorter Oxford instead takes the English word as formed from null with -fy.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Barnhart dates it to 1595, for "to make null",^[3] and Etymonline to the 1590s.^[4] The OED, revised in 2003, first finds it in 1603, in J. Davies's Microcosmos, in a sense now rare: to discredit, efface or undermine a person or a group.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The legal sense, to make null and void, is recorded from 1607, in R. C.'s translation of H. Estienne's World of Wonders,^[2][8] and the general sense, to make something useless or of no effect, from 1609.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it simply as "to annul; to make void".^[9] An intransitive use, to make an act or agreement void, appears in American writing from 1832 to 1869 and is now obsolete.^[2] In the United States the derivative nullification was used from 1798 for a state's action to nullify a federal law.^[3]

Timeline

• 1595 – to make null.^[3] Etymonline dates the word to the 1590s.^[4]
• 1603 – to discredit or undermine a person (now rare).^[2]
• 1607 – to make legally null and void.^[2][8]
• 1609 – to make useless or of no effect; to cancel out.^[2]
• 1832 – intransitive, to make something void (obsolete by 1869).^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To make legally null and void; to annul or invalidate: The court nullified the disputed contract.^{[8][5][10][2]}
2. To make useless or of no effect; to counteract or cancel out: A late goal nullified their lead.^{[8][5][10][2]}
3. (rare) To discredit or undermine a person or group.^[2]

Word family

• nullifier

Related words

• null
• null and void
• nullification
• annul
• nullity
• -fy

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins