The verb **annul** means to declare something legally void — to reduce it to nothing. It entered Middle English in the late 1300s from Old French *anuller*, which descended from Late Latin *annullāre*: a compound of *ad-* (to, toward) and *nullum* (nothing).
## Latin Roots
The key element is *nullus*, meaning 'not any' or 'none.' This is a contraction of *ne* (not) and *ullus* (any), making *nullus* literally 'not-any.' The verb *annullāre* thus means 'to bring to not-any-thing' — to make nothing of something that previously existed as a legal reality.
Late Latin coined *annullāre* for administrative and ecclesiastical use. Roman law had various mechanisms for voiding contracts and decrees, but the specific verb gained currency in the post-classical period as canon law developed its own vocabulary.
## Into English
The Norman Conquest brought a flood of French legal terminology into English, and *anuller* was among them. By the time Chaucer wrote in the late 14th century, the word was established in English legal usage. The spelling fluctuated — *anullen*, *annulle*, *anull* — before settling on *annul* with the doubled *l* in inflected forms (*annulled*, *annulling*).
The word's primary domain has always been law. One annuls a marriage, a contract, a verdict, or an election. The noun *annulment* (first attested in the 15th century) refers to the act or result of annulling. In Catholic canon law, an annulment declares that a valid marriage never existed — distinct from divorce, which ends a marriage that did.
## Henry VIII and the Politics of Annulment
The word gained its most dramatic historical resonance in the 1530s. Henry VIII sought an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, arguing that the union had never been valid because Catherine had previously been married to his brother Arthur. When Pope Clement VII refused, Henry broke with Rome, established the Church of England, and had Archbishop Cranmer annul the marriage in 1533. The legal fiction that a twenty-four-year marriage had never existed showed the word's peculiar power: annulment does not merely end something but retroactively unmakes it.
## Modern Usage
Today *annul* remains primarily legal. Courts annul marriages, contracts, and arbitration awards. The word carries more force than *cancel* or *void* — it implies a formal, authoritative act that erases the legal existence of something. In mathematics, values that reduce an expression to zero are sometimes called *annulling*. The common thread across all uses is the Latin core: to make null, to bring to nothing