Translation of 'nothing'

Question

What is the most accurate translation of the phrase, 'from nothing, [back] to nothing.'? my own attempt is 'Ex nihilo in nihilum' Does that sound right?

Answer 1

Apart from the choice of prepositions (which will depend on the exact implications you're going for), the main difficulty here is that nihil is a "defective" noun: it's missing some of its forms. The ablative is very rare, and the dative doesn't exist at all, as far as I know.

But the phrase ex nihilō does very much exist, so that's a good starting point. For the second half, I would use ad nihil. The phrase feels like it wants "toward" more than "into", and ad-nihil-ō is a verb meaning "to bring to nothing" (the ancestor of "annihilate"). The accusative is one case that definitely exists for nihil, so you don't have to worry about that part.

So I would say ex nihilō ad nihil. You can also use nīl or nihilum for the accusative, if you prefer, but I like the sound of the bare nihil. You can also use in instead of ad, echoing the famous phrase quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris, but I find the meaning of "turn into" less clear without the verb vertō, which is why I prefer ad.

(You can also add verbs, if you want: "from nothing you come/arise/are created and to nothing you will return". But the choice of verbs depends even more on your intended meaning.)