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Definition of null in English:

null

Pronunciation /nəl/

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adjective

  • 1predicative Having no legal or binding force; invalid.

    ‘the establishment of a new interim government was declared null and void’
    • ‘He is complaining against an order issued in favour of the respondent which ruled that a power of attorney issued by the complainant in favour of an English firm of solicitors for litigation against the respondent was null and void.’
    • ‘It is of some interest perhaps that in the defence filed one of the grounds on which the lease is said to have been null and void is that it contained the consent of the second mortgagee.’
    • ‘Counsel for ING submitted that once it is proven there was a breach and there was a loss arising out of the welding, the policy is null and void.’
    • ‘Any law passed by a State, in violation of any constitutional privilege or immunity, would be null and void; the courts would not enforce it.’
    • ‘I elected to treat Justice Wallace's order as being null and void.’
    • ‘The orders I asked for that the warrant of possession, the writ of possession, the warrant of possession, and the notice to quit were null and void.’
    • ‘The contention of the French Republic that Article 177 cannot be used to obtain from the Court a ruling that such an act is null and void is pertinent.’
    • ‘So therefore his costs, which the AEC and the Council then pursued me for bankruptcy, his costs are therefore null and void, because he cannot present the issue of his costs.’
    • ‘But the industry was of the opinion that the regulations were null and void, and warned that pharmacists prosecuted for reverting to the old pricing system could sue the state for damages.’
    • ‘Days ago, the Senate declared null and void the amnesty laws passed by Carlos Menem.’
    • ‘But Mr Gall confirmed that the process, likely to cost £30,000, would be null and void if North Yorkshire council were abolished.’
    • ‘Any agreement entered into on the basis that the couple were married (such as a separation agreement) would be null and void.’
    • ‘Yorkston is adamant that the club's lease is secure, but an expert on receivership told Scotland on Sunday that such leases could be declared null and void.’
    • ‘So the United States and interim government's agreements are null and void.’
    • ‘One is that the statute be declared null and void because it conflicts with federal law, so it doesn't operate in the future.’
    • ‘Such provisions may still appear to exist in State constitutions, but it cannot be enforced, so it is null and void and not part of the body of the law.’
    • ‘All treaties and old ways of doing things are null and void.’
    • ‘One thing I do know is that if she has no license then your insurance is also null and void.’
    • ‘But as part of Air Canada's financial reorganization plan, all unions must agree to concessions or else all deals previously reached are null and void.’
    • ‘A lot of my work challenges those mythologies and stereotypes to highlight the fact that all culture is essentially hybrid, and that the notion of purity is null and void.’
    invalid, null and void, void
    View synonyms

  • 2Having or associated with the value zero.

    ‘Poor exposure assessment, insofar as it is nondifferential, distorts the epidemiological measures of association toward the null value.’
    • ‘Both coefficients were statistically different from the null value of zero.’
    • ‘The argument behind x is not quantitative, and we do not have an expression for its expected value under a null isolation model.’
    • ‘The unbroken vertical line is at the null value.’
    • ‘If the values for the real data fell within this null distribution of values, then the trees constructed for each half of the gene were not significantly different in topology.’
    • ‘Rather, I should have entered a null value (remember, null and the empty string are distinct values).’
    1. 2.1Mathematics (of a set or matrix) having no elements, or only zeros as elements.
      ‘Neither are accountable in terms of set theory: the null set is problematic and the class of all sets can only be discussed outside of the frame of set theory (as a ‘class’)!’
      • ‘There's a nearly null set of deep insight into emergent functionality that's reduced to useful practice.’
      • ‘If one is looking for still deeper meaning to Willard, then it can be argued that our title hero is the ultimate victim, a desperate human null set put upon by every aspect of society.’
      • ‘For the estimation of the null distribution, one matrix was kept constant while rows and columns of the others were permuted.’
      • ‘Metabolic pools are linear combinations of individual metabolite concentrations that do not change over time and are contained in the left null space of the stoichiometric matrix.’

  • 3Lacking distinctive qualities; having no positive substance or content.

    • ‘his curiously null life’
    lacking in character, empty, characterless, blank, colourless, expressionless, vacuous, insipid, vapid, inane
    View synonyms

noun

  • 1literary A zero.

    1. 1.1A dummy letter in a cipher.
      • ‘In other words, they cannot contain nulls or " / ‘characters.’’
    2. 1.2Electronics A condition of no signal.
      • ‘A well-designed GPS receiver usually can recover from a deep signal null within approximately one second.’
    3. 1.3A direction in which no electromagnetic radiation is detected or emitted.
      ‘The null in the pattern is directed not only in the direction of the interference source, but also in the opposite direction where there might be desired GPS signals.’
      • ‘Intensity change ranged from + 8 to - 8 dB per s in 1 dB per s steps; nulls for changing-loudness aftereffects lie well within this range.’

transitive verb

[with object]Electronics

  • Combine (a signal) with another in order to create a null; cancel out.

    ‘the tumor can be more readily identified by nulling the high signal from bone marrow’
    • ‘Omnidirectional-antenna nulling systems tend to produce null rings that block GPS reception from a portion of the sky.’
    • ‘Therefore, the losses of the cables have to be nulled out or measured and noted.’
    • ‘This is stacked-carrier discrete multiple tone communication technology and combinations with code nulling, interference cancellation, retrodirective communication and adaptive antenna arrays.’
    • ‘The third channel is used for jammer classification, interference blanking and sidelobe nulling.’
    • ‘New nulling multibeam antennas will allow users to operate geographically closer to sources of jamming.’

Origin

Late Middle English from French nul, nulle, from Latin nullus ‘none’, from ne ‘not’ + ullus ‘any’.