In similarity to this question: once, twice, thrice, *frice?
What are some words that indicate 'zero times' ?
EDIT:
I'm looking for a word that clearly states a zero-time occurrence. Not a simple negation.
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It was done once. It was done twice. It was done never. It was never done. |
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There is no English word that means "zero times." The only words which mean "{number} times" in English are once, twice, and thrice. However, there are many ways to express that an action has been done zero times (including those given in the other answers), for example, saying, "It was done zero times." |
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The typical way to say this is to simply negate the action. For the example of "It was done once/twice/thrice", one would say "it was not done." Other than that, there is no equivalent to once/twice/thrice for anything other than 1, 2, 3. |
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Once, twice, thrice? Perhaps the answer is Never found. Not Ever. So we still have the negation, but it's applied to the time Ever, not the verb. |
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I believe this is a philosophical problem, not linguistic. "It was done zero times" is just a clumsy way of saying "it was not done." So asking for a word that means one and not the other is self-defeating. (This is a common mistake by computer programmers, since "a variable set to zero" is not the same as "a variable not defined". But reality does not work like that.) |
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