English

Alternative forms

• no-one; noone (proscribed); noöne (rare)

Pronoun

no one

1. Not one person, nobody.
   • 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

     "The doctor was confined to the house," Poole said, "and saw no one." On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and having now been used for the last two months to see his friend almost daily, he found this return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits."

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 20, in The China Governess:

     The story struck the depressingly familiar note with which true stories ring in the tried ears of experienced policemen. No one queried it. It was in the classic pattern of human weakness, mean and embarrassing and sad.

2. The logical negation of someone.
   • 1893, Walter Besant, The Ivory Gate, Prologue:

     Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language […] his clerks […] understood him very well. If he had written a love letter, or a farce, or a ballade, or a story, no one, either clerks, or friends, or compositors, would have understood anything but a word here and a word there.

Usage notes

• No one has a higher degree of formality than nobody.
• American users (COCA) use no one 60% more than they use nobody. UK users (BNC) use nobody 3 times more than they use no one. For the spoken BNC usage, mostly informal, nobody is used nearly 10 times more often than all spellings of no one.
• American users (COCA) prefer the spelling no one to either noone or no-one by more than 500 to 1.
• UK users (BNC) prefer no one to no-one 4 to 1 and no one to noone 50 to 1.

Synonyms

• nobody, none

Antonyms

• everyone

Related terms

Translations