For compounds or two-word expressions not listed where the first component is nient, please consult the appropriate entry for the second component.

It is not always possible to determine if nient functions as a pronoun or adverb in a number of locutions.

The MED has only one attestation supporting the entry for nient which it glosses first as ‘a cipher’ with no supporting citation, followed by the locution beau nient defined as ‘a pretty nothing, a figurehead’. This is not found in the OED though the form néant is attested; it did not appear in English until the mid-nineteenth century. It was also borrowed into English from Italian asniente, at the beginning of the 20th century.

J.P. Collas provides a discussion of the use of nient in the Year Books in YBB Ed II XXV p. cxix-cxx where he suggests the etymology of the word ‘remains unresolved: cf. ne inde (Meyer-Lübke), nec-inde (Ettmayer), ne-gente (Gamillscheg), nec-entem (von Wartburg, Bloch, Dauzat).' The modern consensus is a *ne gentem root: cf. FEW; M. Iliescu in Festschrift Holtus (2011) and G. Rohlfs, Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache (1949).