nonexistence
State of nothingness
Nonexistence is the state of not existing or not being real.
Philosophy distinguishes between things that exist and things that don't—unicorns, square circles, the present King of France.
More practically, nonexistence describes absence where something might be expected: The nonexistence of any records made the investigation difficult.
The adjective is nonexistent.
Without legal effect
- vacuumAbsence of matter
- abyssImmeasurably profound depth
- oblivionComplete erasure from memory
- darknessTotal absence of light
infinity · space · black hole · entropy · heat death · big crunch · antimatter · singularity
Complete absence of existence
- nonbeingAbsence of existence
- lackDeficiency or absence
- voidWithout legal effect
- emptinessAbsence of substance
vacancy · nonentity · nullity · negation · oblivion · unreality · disappearance · vanishing
Rejection of objective meaning
- metaphysicsPhilosophy of existence's nature
- ontologyStudy of existence's nature
- beingExisting as something
- essenceFundamental nature of something
substance · reality · illusion · maya · emptiness · impermanence · transience · ephemerality
void
Without legal effect
darkness · infinity · space · black hole · entropy · heat death · big crunch · antimatter · singularity · event horizon
nothingness
Complete absence of existence
emptiness · vacancy · nonentity · nullity · negation · oblivion · unreality · disappearance · vanishing · extinction
nihilism
Rejection of objective meaning
- metaphysicsPhilosophy of existence's nature
- ontologyStudy of existence's nature
- beingExisting as something
essence · substance · reality · illusion · maya · emptiness · impermanence · transience · ephemerality · mortality
- existencebeing, lives, reality, life, actuality
- mortalitydeath, death knell, deceased, death rate, death acceptance
- "Non-" wordsnonprofit, nonfiction, nonstop, nonsense, nonfat
- nothingnessnothing, zero, nil, none, nada
- emptinessemptiness, void, vacuum, nothingness, blank
- metaphysicsessence, being, reality, substance theory, ontology
nonexistencepresence
State of being somewhere
actuality · attendance · manifestation · occurrence · instantiation