What's the difference between anything and nothing?

Anything


Definition:

  • (n.) Any object, act, state, event, or fact whatever; thing of any kind; something or other; aught; as, I would not do it for anything.
  • (n.) Expressing an indefinite comparison; -- with as or like.
  • (adv.) In any measure; anywise; at all.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) At the moment we are, if anything, slightly lagging."
  • (2) I hope they fight for the money to make their jobs worth doing, because it's only with the money (a drop in the ocean though it may be) that they'll be able to do anything.
  • (3) I usually use them as a rag with which to clean the toilet but I didn’t have anything else to wear today because I’m so fat.” While this exchange will sound baffling to outsiders, to Brits it actually sounds like this: “You like my dress?
  • (4) Anything not eligible is simply ignored or assumed to be someone else’s responsibility.
  • (5) Other than failing to get a goal, I couldn’t ask for anything more.” From Lambert’s perspective there was an element of misfortune about the first and third goals, with Willian benefitting from handy ricochets on both occasions.
  • (6) In assessing damaged nets and curtains it must be recognised that anything less than the best vector control may have no appreciable impact on holoendemic malaria.
  • (7) While superheroes like “superman” (21st in SplashData’s 2014 rankings) and “batman” (24th) may be popular choices for passwords, the results if they are cracked could be anything other than super – and users will only have themselves to blame.
  • (8) There's a massive police station there, and they couldn't do anything.
  • (9) If we’re waiting around for the Democratic version to sail through here, or the Republican version to sail through here, all those victims who are waiting for us to do something will wait for days, months, years, forever and we won’t get anything done.” Senator Bill Nelson, whose home state of Florida is still reeling from the Orlando shooting, said he felt morally obligated to return to his constituents with results.
  • (10) You can get a five-month-old to eat almost anything,” says Clare Llewellyn, lecturer in behavioural obesity research at University College London.
  • (11) TalkTalk said customers should monitor their accounts over the coming months and report anything unusual to Action Fraud.
  • (12) This conception of the city as an expression of both regal power and social order, guided by cosmological principles and the pursuit of yin-yang equilibrium, was unlike anything in the western tradition.
  • (13) It may unsettle Exxon Mobil a little but they are pretty experienced now and I don’t think they would derail anything,” she said.
  • (14) Clarke varies the intensity of sessions but for most of the time it's go hard or go home: I've learned that neither more pain nor being sick are anything to be afraid of.
  • (15) 11.57pm BST "Can anyone remember anything, anything at all, from the debates four years ago?
  • (16) More than anything else, though, we need a clear and unambiguous commitment to end the housing crisis within a generation.
  • (17) And I was a little surprised because I said: ‘Doesn’t sound like he did anything wrong there.’ But he did something wrong with respect to the vice-president and I thought that was not acceptable.” So that’s clear.
  • (18) Indeed, with the pageantry already knocked off the top of the news by reports from Old Trafford, the very idea of a cohesive coalition programme about anything other than cuts looks that bit harder to sustain.
  • (19) "There's not previously been anything of this size or scale," she told the Guardian last month .
  • (20) We made it clear we don’t support extending hours to do anything other than debate the important issue of Senate voting reform and we won’t do anything to bring on the ABCC legislation,” Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, told ABC TV.

Nothing


Definition:

  • (n.) Not anything; no thing (in the widest sense of the word thing); -- opposed to anything and something.
  • (n.) Nonexistence; nonentity; absence of being; nihility; nothingness.
  • (n.) A thing of no account, value, or note; something irrelevant and impertinent; something of comparative unimportance; utter insignificance; a trifle.
  • (n.) A cipher; naught.
  • (adv.) In no degree; not at all; in no wise.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "We examined the reachability of social networking sites from our measurement infrastructure within Turkey, and found nothing unusual.
  • (2) Northern Ireland will not be dragged back by terrorists who have nothing but misery to offer."
  • (3) But becoming that person in a traditional society can be nothing short of social suicide.
  • (4) But what they take for a witticism might very well be true; most of Ellis's novels tell more or less the same story, about the same alienated ennui, and maybe they really are nothing more than the fictionalised diaries of an unremarkably unhappy man.
  • (5) Almost nothing is known about nature and timing of the embryonic cues which induce or initiate spicule formation by these cells.
  • (6) If Queensland goes ahead and develops and dredges Abbot Point, it may all be for nothing.
  • (7) Meanwhile the Brooklyn Nets, who have been dealing with nothing but bad news since the start of the regular season, will be without Paul Pierce for 2-4 weeks, also due to a right hand fracture.
  • (8) After violence had run its bloody course, the country’s rulers conceded it had been a catastrophe that had brought nothing but “grave disorder, damage and retrogression”.
  • (9) But there was a clear penalty on Diego Costa – it is a waste of time and money to have officials by the side of the goal because normally they do nothing – and David Luiz’s elbow I didn’t see, I confess.
  • (10) The three-year-old comes into the kitchen for a drink, and as Steve opens the fridge, I can see it contains nothing apart from a half-full bottle of milk.
  • (11) It’s the same story over and over.” Children’s author Philip Ardagh , who told the room he once worked as an “unprofessional librarian” in Lewisham, said: “Closing down a library is like filing off the end of a swordfish’s nose: pointless.” 'Speak up before there's nothing left': authors rally for National Libraries Day Read more “Today proves that support for public libraries comes from all walks of life and it’s not rocket science to work out why.
  • (12) She is not: "Religion has nothing to do with spirituality."
  • (13) The prime minister said: “I am taking absolutely nothing for granted.
  • (14) We always feel like it's Hobbitshire – a green valley where nothing happens."
  • (15) She says he wants his actors to be in a "second state", instinctive, holding nothing back.
  • (16) As for gay men, there is absolutely nothing that suggests they are any less war-happy than heterosexuals.
  • (17) Like Morton, Sevigny is an actor who holds nothing back from the camera.
  • (18) Answer, citing Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This is a very British suicide.
  • (19) I’d argue, furthermore, that these preoccupations are preventing people from seeking support, as if nothing could be more the opposite of these things than admission of the need for help.
  • (20) Lion cubs fathered by Cecil, the celebrated lion shot dead in Zimbabwe , may already have been killed by a rival male lion and even if they were still alive there was nothing conservationists could do to protect them, a conservation charity has warned.