'Nihil' (nothing) is a contraction of Latin 'ne hilum' — 'not even a tiny bean-spot.' Nothing from nothing.
A person who rejects all religious and moral principles, believing that life is meaningless; historically, a member of a Russian revolutionary movement in the 1860s that rejected established social institutions.
From 'nihilism' + '-ist.' 'Nihilism' was coined in the early nineteenth century from Latin 'nihil' (nothing), which contracts 'ne' (not) and 'hilum' (a small thing, a trifle — literally the black spot on a bean marking the point of attachment). The term was popularized by Ivan Turgenev's novel 'Fathers and Sons' (1862), though Friedrich Jacobi had used 'Nihilismus' in German philosophy earlier. Latin 'nihil' also produced 'annihilate' (to reduce to nothing). Key
Latin 'nihil' literally means 'not a hilum' — and a hilum is the tiny black mark on a bean where it was attached to the pod. So 'nothing' in Latin was originally 'not even a bean-spot' — a charmingly agricultural way to express absolute zero. This botanical term survives in modern botany: the hilum is still the standard term for a seed's attachment scar.