Zilches

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An insignificant amount or something of no value
2. a colloquial term for a situation resulting in zero or nothing
3. denoting a complete lack of success or profit in a given context

Etymology: Joe Zilch was an imaginary figure, a bit like John Doe, invoked to stand in for someone who doesn't exist. The name appears in a stage routine by the comedian Frank Tinney, where Joe Zilch was an unseen character, and the columnist Nunnally Johnson later used him in his Brooklyn Daily Eagle column in 1923. The "zilch" sense of nothing grew out of that fictional man, whose name became a joke about having nothing to show for oneself. Plural forms of "zilch" are the kind of thing that sounds odd to purists, but it follows naturally from a word that has become a noun for amounts of nothing. Here the plural simply means several instances of nothing, as in "we got zilches for our efforts."

Synonyms: naughts, nothing, nil

Antonyms: plenty, abundance