Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adverb In no definite direction.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Not any whither; in no direction, or to no place; nowhere.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adverb Archaic Not anywhither; in no direction; nowhere.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb archaic nowhere; to no place.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

no +‎ whither

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Examples

  • And I turned and looked down the slope; and surely all before me was utter wildness of a dark desolation; for it did seem to go nowhither but into an everlasting night.

    The Night Land 2007

  • Birdalone, we abode there but a little while to rest us from the boat, and went nowhither from the strand, and so went on our way in

    The Water of the Wondrous Isles 2007

  • And thus it was with millions of men that night — a flight nowhither, with limbs heavy with heat and breath fierce and scant, and the flood like a wall swift and white behind.

    The Door in the Wall, and other stories Herbert George 2006

  • Nokes first walked off, sloping out from the veranda in a half-shy, half-cunning manner, looking nowhither, and saying a word to no one.

    Harry Heathcote of Gangoil 2004

  • They hurried hither and thither and arrived nowhither; they let their cigars go out, left their glasses half full, broke off their talk in the middle of a word.

    From Capetown to Ladysmith An Unfinished Record of the South African War G. W. Steevens

  • But we get nowhither unless we carefully distinguish between the foundation of the problem and the problem itself.

    Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue Various

  • We are like people who have lost their memories on the way to a feast, and our steps, in which is only dimly felt the remembrance of a purpose, take us nowhither.

    A Tramp's Sketches Stephen Graham 1929

  • The river seemed to come from nowhere and flow nowhither.

    Tales of Unrest 1920

  • The streets are exactly alike, so narrow that a carriage could hardly pass, paved with rough cobbles, and tortuous: their intricacy is amazing, labyrinthine; they wind in and out of one another, leading nowhither; they meander on for half a mile and stop suddenly, or turn back, so that you are forced to go in the direction you came.

    The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia 1919

  • Love's sowing is more agreeable than love's harvest: or, let us put it, he allures us into byways leading nowhither, among blossoms which fall before the first rough wind: so at the last, with much excitement and breath and valuable time quite wasted, we find that the end of all is death.

    Jurgen A Comedy of Justice James Branch Cabell 1918

Comments

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  • Towards nowhere.

    "...her questions had apparently been questions pure and simple, leading nowhither and without bearings on any new truth."

    Henry James, The Bostonians.

    December 23, 2007

  • "How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband's mind were replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither?"

    - George Eliot, Middlemarch

    February 19, 2008