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Venal vs Null - What's the difference?

venal | null |

As an adjective venal

is available for a price; venal.

As a noun null is

zero, nil; the cardinal number before einn.

venal

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl)

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • venous; pertaining to veins
  • Etymology 2

    From (etyl) , compare vend

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (archaic) For sale; available for purchase.
  • Of a position, privilege etc.: available for purchase rather than assigned on merit.
  • * 2002 , , The Great Nation , Penguin 2003, p. 140:
  • Thus, regimental commands in the army were – as with the judiciary or the financial bureaucracy – venal posts, which were purchased, bequeathed and sold among the nobility.
  • Capable of being bought (of a person); willing to take bribes.
  • Corrupt, mercenary.
  • * 1785 , The Times , 9 Feb 1785, page 1, column C:
  • Though there is a disposition in mankind, to declaim against the corruption and peculation of the present times, as being more venal than formerly; yet, if we look back to different periods, we shall find statesmen and politicians, as selfish and corrupt, (...) as those who have lately figured on the political stage.
    Synonyms
    * (for sale) purchasable * (willing to take bribes) crooked
    Antonyms
    * (willing to take bribes) straight, honest, uncorrupt

    Anagrams

    * *

    null

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A non-existent or empty value or set of values.
  • Zero]] quantity of [[expression, expressions; nothing.
  • (Francis Bacon)
  • Something that has no force or meaning.
  • (computing) the ASCII or Unicode character (), represented by a zero value, that indicates no character and is sometimes used as a string terminator.
  • (computing) the attribute of an entity that has no valid value.
  • Since no date of birth was entered for the patient, his age is null .
  • One of the beads in nulled work.
  • (statistics) null hypothesis
  • Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Having no validity, "null and void"
  • insignificant
  • * 1924 , Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove :
  • In proportion as we descend the social scale our snobbishness fastens on to mere nothings which are perhaps no more null than the distinctions observed by the aristocracy, but, being more obscure, more peculiar to the individual, take us more by surprise.
  • absent or non-existent
  • (mathematics) of the null set
  • (mathematics) of or comprising a value of precisely zero
  • (genetics, of a mutation) causing a complete loss of gene function, amorphic.
  • Derived terms

    * nullity

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • to nullify; to annul
  • (Milton)

    See also

    * nil ----