unthing

noun

unthing

noun

Etymology Calque of German Unding, equivalent to un- + thing. Compare also West Frisian ûnding, Dutch onding.

1

Something irrelevant or inconsequential; a non-issue; an absurdity.

They made a thing of an unthing and put it on paper.1964, Testimony of members of Congress, interested individuals, and organizations:
Whether or not PPB is an unthing in the federal bureaucracy, the budgetary concepts that are represented by it and its conceptual predecessors are still viable within OMB: control, management, and planning.1998, U.C. Mandal, J. Rawat, Public Administration: Principles and Practice, page 272:

2 more examples

This hidden heart essence, so secret, An unthing untouched by the eterne […]2006, Anne Carolyn Klein, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Unbounded Wholeness:
It does not follow from either the metaphor or the possibility of defining this space mathematically that it must be Leibniz's dreaded unthing “unthing” – a something that is nothing.2015, Catherine Wilson, Leibniz's Metaphysics, page 218:

Related terms: thingly, nonperson, unperson, nonplace, unplace, nonthing

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.