nowhere, adv.
(ˈnəʊhwɛə(r))
Forms: α. 1 nahwær, -hwar, 4 naquer, -quhare; 3 nawhar, 4–5 nawher(e, 5 nay-where. β. 1 nohwær, 2–3 -hwer, 3 -hwere, -hwar(e; 4 noquar, -quer, 5 noqwere; 3 neowhær, 3–5 nowher, 3–4 -whar, 4– nowhere, 6 noo-, noewhere. γ. 3 nohwhar, noþware, 4 noghwhere; 3 nouhwar, 4 nouhewere, nouȝwher (5 -e), 3 nowhwere, Orm. nowwhar, 5 nowwhere.
[f. no adv. + where adv. Cf. nawer and nower adv.]
1. a. In or at no place; not anywhere.
| α 971 Blickl. Hom. 59 Ealle þa ᵹewitaþ swa swa wolcn,.., & ofer þæt nahwær eft ne æteowaþ. c 1000 ælfric Gen. xix. 17 Ne þu ne ætstande na hwar on þisum earde. c 1055 Byrhtferth's Handboc in Anglia VIII. 308 Þæt we nahwar ne gan of laᵹe. a 1300 Cursor M. 16762 + 131 He miȝt not bere vp his hede, Ne nawhar it doun lay. 1393 Langl. P. Pl. C. iii. 227 He was nawher welcome for hus meny tales. c 1475 Partenay 1924 A man no better myght hit employ nay-where. |
| β a 1050 Gregory's Dial. (1900) 127 ‘Hwær æton ᵹe?’ Hi him andswaredon & cwædon ‘nohwær’ [v.r. ‘nower’]. c 1175 Lamb. Hom. 113 He ne scal nohwer ortrowian bi godes fultum. c 1205 Lay. 8392 Nes hit nowher itald þat weore nowhar swa muchel mete [etc.]. c 1275 Wom. Samaria 44 in O.E. Misc. 85 No-hwere bute in þe temple. 13.. Cursor M. 6047 (Gött.), Men noquar ne miht se Griss on erde, ne lef on tre. 1387 Trevisa Higden (Rolls) V. 297 He..passed nowher his fader bondes. c 1400 Destr. Troy 12083 He denyet..þat noqwere he knew Þat commly be keppet. 1490 Caxton Eneydos iv. 20 The..bloode.. hath..yssued oute of my body, and nowher ellis. 1511 Guylforde's Pilgr. (Camden) 11, I trowe they haue noo where so stronge a place. 1603 Dekker Batchelors Banquet (1882) 193 To auoid greater charges..he rests nowhere by the way. 1651 Hobbes Leviath. iv. xlvi. 371 Because the Universe is All, that which is no part of it, is Nothing; and consequently no where. 1711 Addison Spect. No. 163 ¶3 Theodosius..had left his Chamber about Midnight, and could no⁓where be found. 1797 Mrs. Radcliffe Italian Prol., He was nowhere to be seen. 1822 Shelley The Zucca 22 Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere. 1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) I. 441 There only, and nowhere else, he can find wisdom in her purity. |
| attrib. 1589 Nashe Anat. Absurd. Wks. (Grosart) I. 14 Those worne out impressions of the feyned no where acts, of Arthur of the rounde table. 1889 Advance (Chicago) 10 Jan., Had he arrived at his hotel in Detroit, instead of at a nowhere side-hill. |
| γ c 1200 Ormin 13073, I Crisstenndom mann findenn maȝȝ Hemm alle, & nowwhar elless. a 1225 Leg. Kath. 1306 Ne funde we nowhwer nan swa deope ilearet. 1362 Langl. P. Pl. A. ii. 193 He nas nouȝwher wel-come for his mony tales. 1390 Gower Conf. III. 136 And that is noghwhere elles sene Of kinde with non other beste. c 1450 Cursor M. 17556 (Laud), In Israell bene grete fellis, There is he sothe and now-wher ellis. |
b. To no place.
| 13.. Cursor M. 3495 (Gött.), For-þi was he noquer sent, Bot to þe hous ay tok he tent. 1484 Caxton Fables of Alfonce xii, She myght not goo nowher. 1720 De Foe Capt. Singleton (1906) 37 We were upon a voyage and no voyage, we were bound somewhere and nowhere. 1778 Burney Evelina xvi, I never go nowhere without him. 1861 Mrs. Carlyle Lett. III. 73 Mr. C. was minded to go nowhere this summer. |
2. In no part or passage of a book, etc.; in no work or author. Also
Comb.| a 1225 Ancr. R. 160 Nouhware ine holi write nis iwriten of hire speche. 1396–7 in Eng. Hist. Rev. (1907) XXII. 296 Þat is..nowhere ensample in holi scripture. 1594 Hooker Eccl. Pol. ii. vii. §2 Some men..have in their books and writings nowhere mentioned or taught that such things should be in the church. 1678–9 Prideaux Lett. (Camden) 64 The original..of the Roman Empire is noe where better treated of then in this author. 1789 Belsham Ess. II. xxxvi. 281 This, however, is..no-where countenanced by Aristotle. 1870 Rogers Hist. Glean. Ser. ii. 77 This great writer..is nowhere a partisan. 1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) III. 280 Sweet sauces are nowhere mentioned in Homer. 1889 R. B. Anderson tr. Rydberg's Teut. Mythol. 155 A new, nowhere-supported myth. |
3. nowhere near or
† nowhere nigh, not nearly, not by a long way. (
Cf. near adv.2 6,
nigh adv. 12 d.)
| 1413 Pilgr. Sowle (Caxton, 1483) v. xi. 101 Though the dede were nowhere nyghe soo greete, yett is hit a manere of resemblaunce. c 1449 Pecock Repr. i. viii. 42 Into the contrarie parti is not had nouȝwhere nyȝ so probable..euydencis. Ibid. ii. xi. 208 Nowhere nyȝ alle men. |
4. slang.
a. to be nowhere, to be badly beaten (in a race, contest, etc.); to be hopelessly distanced or out of the running. Freq.
transf. (In common use from
c 1850.)
| 1755 Gentl. Mag. XXV. 153 His powerful deep rate, by which all the horses that ran against him were no-where. 1826 Sporting Mag. XVII. 306 Many men were nowhere at the end. 1831 Macaulay Essay on Boswell's Life Johnson in Edin. Rev. Sept. 16 Boswell is the first of biographers..and the rest nowhere. 1861 Illustr. Lond. News 7 Dec. 569/3 The first cow..was ‘nowhere’ at Birmingham. 1869 Seeley Lect. & Ess. (1870) 22 In the Augustan age democracy was nowhere. 1895 Athenæum 14 Sept. 347/3 To the philologist and the student of English literature, it is Oxford first, the rest nowhere. 1928 C. A. Nicholson Hell & Duchess vi. 108 Don't imagine you have a fortune there. A hundred francs goes nowhere these days. |
b. U.S. (See
quot. 1859.)
| 1859 Bartlett Dict. Amer. (ed. 2) 297 To be nowhere is to be at sea; to be utterly at a loss; to be ignorant. 1868 in De Vere Americanisms (1871), When he began to ask me questions about surgery, I was just nowhere, and I can't tell, to save my life, what I said to him. |
5. a. As
n. A non-existent place; absence of all place.
| 1831 Carlyle Sart. Res. ii. v, How wilt thou..find that shorter North-west Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a Nowhere? 1872 Bushnell Serm. Living Subj. 167 It is now become as if all truth were gone out, and night and nowhere had the world. |
b. A remote or inaccessible place;
freq. in
colloq. phr. the middle of nowhere.
| 1908 Dialect Notes III. 312 Forty miles from nowhere, far from any civilized or settled section. 1951 E. Coxhead One Green Bottle vii. 182 My uncle's farm is on the road to nowhere... They often don't see a new face for months on end. 1960 Times 21 Nov. (Canada Suppl.) p. xi/2 Hydro-Quebec is starting to move far up the Manicouagan, in the middle of nowhere. 1963 A. Lubbock Austral. Roundabout 30, I got going again pretty quickly as I didn't want to be caught by the storm in the middle of nowhere. 1967 Mrs. L. B. Johnson White House Diary 7 July (1970) 544 The country was sparsely populated and it was surprising to come upon such an enormous church, out in nowhere. 1967 E. Cousins Death in Quiet Place i. 10 ‘I never heard of Boling Green.’ ‘You wouldn't, old boy. Fag-end of nowhere, down a two-mile lane from the second-class road.’ |
c. A dull person, place, or thing. Passing into
adj.: insignificant, unsatisfactory, dull; non-existent. In most contexts
slang.| 1940 L. MacNeice Last Ditch 14 The here and there and nowhere birds. 1948 L. Spitzer Linguistics & Literary History i. 18 The priestess Bacbuc (whose ambiguous response: ‘Trinc!’ is just a nowhere word). 1953 W. Burroughs Junkie x. 110 The others [sc. patients] were a beat, nowhere bunch of people. The type psychiatrists like. 1956 B. Holiday Lady sings Blues (1958) viii. 82 A Rolls is built for pleasure... But it's nowhere for highballing a hundred and fifty miles to make a gig. 1959 ‘F. Newton’ Jazz Scene xii. 220 The hipster classifies..an undesirable state as nowhere. 1959 Esquire Nov. 70J Nowhere, the absolute of nothing. Example: That guy is nowhere. 1966 Melody Maker 7 May 5/2 We all thought it was the most nowhere record we'd made. 1970 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 26 Sept. 12/2 He wants to spread this physical act as a sign..and then..see work expanding in the nowhere parish to merge with the national scene. 1974 Ibid. 14 Sept. 27/4 What you'll remember is the casual dreariness of the nowhere towns and the faded dreams of the guys who never managed to get out of them. |
Hence
ˈnowhereness.
| 1838 Sterling Ess. (1848) I. 150 A dateless no-where-ness of the facts and topics. 1928 D. H. Lawrence Let. 15 Dec. (1932) 766 A ghastly slummy nowhereness—but France seems all like that. 1929 ― Pansies 105 We can but howl the lugubrious howl of idiots, The howl of the utterly lost Howling their nowhereness. |