nessuno

Forms

nessuno (feminine nessuna, no plural, superlative nessunissimo)^[1] Old and popular Tuscan has nissuno;^[2][3][4] Old Sicilian has nesù and Old Bolognese neson.^[5] Literary Italian had the plurals nessuni and nessune.^[6][5]

Etymology

It continues a spoken Latin phrase, inherited from Latin nē (“not”) ipse (“self”) ūnus (“one”), “not even one”.^[7][8][9][1] Nocentini and GRADIT give it in the accusative, ⟨ne ipsum unum⟩.^[8][9] The same phrase gave Old French nesun and Old Occitan neisun.^[5][10][11] DEI calls it typical of Apennine Italy, while northern Italy, like Old Occitan negun, Catalan ningú and Spanish ningún, continues Latin nec (“and not”) ūnus, as in Venetian negun and Lombard negün.^[5] Dialect forms include Neapolitan nisciuno, Sardinian nisciunu, Friulian nissun and Ligurian nisciùn.^[1] Meyer-Lübke notes that the consonants of the Italian forms have not been fully explained.^[10]

Latin nē goes back to Proto-Indo-European *ne (“not”).^[12] De Vaan derives ipse from a doubled pronoun, Proto-Italic *e(s)-pe-so.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELI's first record is in Giacomino Pugliese, before 1250, with the sense “not one, not even one”.^[7][9]

Semantic evolution

From the start the word also had a positive sense, “any”, in doubtful and comparative clauses: Petrarch writes that his days fled “più leggier che nessun cervo” (lighter than any deer).^[13] Petrarch also has the truncated pronoun nessun (“Nessun di servitù giammai si dolse”), now only literary.^[13][6] The positive sense survives in questions such as c'è nessuno? (is anyone there?).^[3][9]

Terra di nessuno is a calque of English no man's land, coined by the British in the First World War; the Corriere della Sera used it from 1917, and Panzini's dictionary recorded it in 1918.^[7] Used as a noun, un nessuno is a person of no importance.^[3]

Timeline

• Before 1250 – Giacomino Pugliese uses the word.^[7][9]
• 13th century – Old Sicilian nesù and Old Bolognese forms are recorded.^[5]
• 1917 – Terra di nessuno appears in the Corriere della Sera.^[7]
• 1918 – Panzini records terra di nessuno.^[7]

Meanings

Determiner

1. no, not a single: nessun treno parte oggi; after the verb with non: non ho nessuna fretta.^[9][2][14]
2. In questions and doubtful clauses, any: hai nessuna idea migliore?.^[9][14][6]

Pronoun

1. nobody, no one, none: nessuno ha risposto, in piazza non c'era nessuno, nessuno dei miei amici.^[9][2][3]
2. In questions, anybody: mi ha cercato nessuno?.^[2][14][3]

Noun

1. (figurative) A nobody, a person of no account: si crede importante, ma non è nessuno.^[3][1]

Related words

• niuno
• veruno
• alcuno
• uno
• Latin ipse
• Latin ūnus

Usage notes

Before a noun it behaves like the article uno: nessun libro, nessuno studente, nessun'altra.^[6][3] After the verb it needs a second negation (non ha chiamato nessuno), but not before it (nessuno è venuto).^[9][6][15] It has an emphatic superlative, nessunissimo.^[1][9] Set phrases are figlio di nessuno (a foundling), terra di nessuno (no man's land) and non guardare in faccia a nessuno (to spare no one).^[9][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
4. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 696
5. ^ a b c d e Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2575
6. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
7. ^ a b c d e f Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
12. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
13. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
14. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli