ninguno

Forms

ninguno m (apocopate ningún, feminine ninguna, masculine plural ningunos, feminine plural ningunas)^[1] Old Spanish also wrote nenguno, nengun and ningunt.^[2] Neguno appears in a text of Alfonso X's court, and niguno in texts from 1251 to the 14th century.^[3][4] Leonese has dengún.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish niguno (also nenguno), inherited from Late Latin nec ūnus (“not even one”).^[6][7][1] The Latin phrase joins nec (“and not, nor”), a shortened form of neque, with ūnus (“one”), and is recorded in Late Latin from at least the 5th century.^[1] The numeral goes back to Proto-Indo-European *Hoi-no- (“one”), and the negative particle to the Indo-European sentence negation *ne.^[8][9]

Bénaben explains the ⟨n⟩ of the first syllable by the analogy of nen, ni and nin.^[10] Forms with ⟨d⟩, such as Old Spanish deguno and Occitan degun, arose by dissimilation.^[11][12]

The same Latin phrase gave Portuguese nenhum, Catalan ningú, Italian nessuno and Romanian niciun.^[13][11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates niguno to the end of the 10th century and ninguno, with its short form ningún, to about 1140, the date of the Cantar de mio Cid.^[6] In the Cid the word is an indefinite pronoun, sometimes in the sense “anyone”, and the feminine ninguna is used as a neuter, “nothing”.^[14]

Semantic evolution

Alfonso X's prose uses it as an adjective, “not a single one”, and as a pronoun, “nobody”: nol dira ninguno con quel pese “nobody will say anything to him that grieves him”.^[3] Covarrubias (1611) saw in it the two words nec unus, “corruptly” turned into ninguno, and noted that the final vowel is dropped, as in ningún hombre.^[15] Autoridades added the legal sense “null, void”, quoting a law that declares certain decrees ningunas, y de ningun valor.^[16] The Academy's 1869 edition also treated it as an indefinite pronoun equal to nadie “nobody”.^[17]

The plural, rare with nouns of things, appears in the Quijote: ningunos le parecían tan bien.^[18] Today the plural survives with abstract nouns as an emphatic negation, and with evaluative nouns the word reinforces the negative, no es ningún tonto.^[7][19] From the word the modern language has formed the verb ningunear “to treat as a nobody”.^[20]

Timeline

• late 10th century – first record, in the form niguno.^[6]
• c. 1140 – ninguno and ningún in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[6][14]
• 1250–1279 – ninguno “nobody” and the variant neguno in the prose of Alfonso X's court.^[3]
• c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin nullus as the equivalent.^[21]
• 1523 – first record in the Americas, at Panama: ninguna cosa.^[22]
• 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from nec unus and notes the short form ningún.^[15]
• 1869 – the Academy adds the pronoun sense “nobody”.^[17]

Meanings

Determiner

1. no, not any: denies that anything named by the noun exists; singular only, and placed after the noun when a negative word comes first: Ningún tren sale hoy;^[1] No tengo miedo ninguno.^[7][1]
2. With abstract nouns, no, none at all: No le hace ninguna ilusión.^[7]
3. (emphatic) With nouns that judge or rate, strengthens the negation, like un: No soy ningún experto.^[7]
4. (emphatic plural) With some abstract nouns: No le quedaban ningunas fuerzas.^[7]

Pronoun

1. none, nobody: not one of a set already mentioned or introduced by de: Ninguno de mis hermanos vino.^[7][1]

Word family

• ningunear

Related words

• ni
• uno
• nulo
• Portuguese nenhum

Usage notes

Before a masculine singular noun ninguno becomes ningún: ningún hombre.^[15][23][19] Before the verb it needs no other negative (Ninguno contestó), but after the verb a negative must come first (No contestó ninguno).^[24] Moliner notes that it always keeps its own stress.^[23]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. ninguno
3. ^ a b c Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. ninguno
4. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. niguno
5. ^ Le Men Loyer, Janick (2002–2012), Léxico del leonés actual, 4 vols., León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro; electronic version, Universidad de León, p. s.v. ninguno
6. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. no
7. ^ a b c d e f g Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. ninguno
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses, p. s.v. ninguno
11. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
12. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. nec unus
13. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2328
14. ^ a b Menéndez Pidal, Ramón (1908–1911), Cantar de Mio Cid: texto, gramática y vocabulario, 3 vols., Madrid: Bailly-Baillière, p. 361
15. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1165
16. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 668
17. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 537
18. ^ Cejador y Frauca, Julio (1905–1906), La lengua de Cervantes: gramática y diccionario de la lengua castellana en El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, 2 vols., Madrid: Jaime Ratés, p. 787
19. ^ a b Román, Manuel Antonio (1901–1918), Diccionario de chilenismos y de otras voces y locuciones viciosas, 5 vols., Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de San José, p. 12
20. ^ Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. ningunear
21. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 386
22. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. denguno
23. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. ninguno
24. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. ninguno