Nothing

Kate Bush, in 2011, released an album entitled 50 Words for Snow. The title track features the voice of Stephen Fry contributing 50 increasingly absurd and Fry-ed words for that crystalline variety of H₂O. I have nothing more to say about snow in this post. But as I feel that I have nothing in particular to say today at all, I was wondering if I could find 10 (an aim a little more modest than that of Bush and Fry) ways to say it – nothing, that is.

So here we go:

1. Vacuum – and no, not the hoovering variety.
2. Zero – being somewhat mathematically inclined during a previous life.
3. Zip – not the code (or the fastening device).
4. Void – bodily functions come to mind, but let’s not go there.
5. Love – tennis and all that.
6. Bugger all – Aussies and Brits will get this (not sure about the North American audience – ok, so sometimes it means almost nothing, or next to nothing – cut me a little slack here!).
7. Sweet FA – choose your own version of the “FA”.
8. Nada – alright, so I had to borrow that from Spanish.
9. Nihility – for the philosophically inclined (more like “nothingness” than “nothing”, but let’s not be picky).
10. Nout – another one for the Brits – any geordies listening in?

Actually, nothing is very important. You may recall that line from Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen: “Nothing really matters.” We can change the emphasis a little: Nothing really matters. It really does. There is, after all, much more nothing in the universe than something. There is much more nothing in us than something. Someone once said that if you compressed the entire human population, removing all space, the end product would be about the size of a sugar cube. Like all these claims, this is a very rough approximation (as far as I am aware, no one has yet tried this experiment – perhaps someone should write a funding proposal); but it makes the point. Take away all the nothing from inside me and I will amount to, well, practically nothing.

PS. While you are here, consider signing this petition.