Whether vs Null - What's the difference?
whether | null |
(obsolete) Which of two.
* 1526 , William Tyndale, trans. Bible , Matthew XXVII:
* Bible, Matthew xxi. 31
(lb)
*1526 , (William Tyndale), trans. Bible , Mark II:
*:whether ys it easyer to saye to the sicke of the palsey, thy synnes ar forgeven the: or to saye, aryse, take uppe thy beed and walke?
*1616 , (William Shakespeare), (King John) , I.i:
*:Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge, [...] Or the reputed sonne of Cordelion?
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:
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*:As a political system democracy seems to me extraordinarily foolish,I do not suppose that it matters much in reality whether laws are made by dukes or cornerboys, but I like, as far as possible, to associate with gentlemen in private life.
*{{quote-news, year=2012, date=June 19, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
, title= *{{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= ; if, whether or not.
:
:
A non-existent or empty value or set of values.
Zero]] quantity of [[expression, expressions; nothing.
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.
One of the beads in nulled work.
(statistics) null hypothesis
Having no validity, "null and void"
insignificant
* 1924 , Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove :
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.
As a pronoun whether
is (obsolete) which of two.As a conjunction whether
is (lb).As a noun null is
zero, nil; the cardinal number before einn.whether
English
Pronoun
(English Pronouns)- The debite answered and sayde unto them: whether of the twayne will ye that I lett loosse unto you?
- Whether of them twain did the will of his father?
Conjunction
(English Conjunctions)England 1-0 Ukraine, passage=The incident immediately revived the debate about goal-line technology, with a final decision on whether it is introduced expected to be taken in Zurich on 5 July.}}
Old soldiers?, passage=Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine. The machine gun is so much more lethal than the bow and arrow that comparisons are meaningless. One thing that is true, though, is that murder rates have fallen over the centuries, as policing has spread and the routine carrying of weapons has diminished.}}
Usage notes
* There is some overlap in usage between senses 2 and 3, in that a yes-or-no interrogative content clause can list the two possibilities explicitly in a number of ways:- Do you know whether he's coming or staying?''
- ''Do you know whether he's coming or not?''
- ''Do you know whether or not he's coming?''
null
English
Noun
(en noun)- (Francis Bacon)
- Since no date of birth was entered for the patient, his age is null .
Adjective
(en adjective)- 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.