Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
nothing for it en · NOUN
Pronunciation
Meanings
-
(idiomatic, qualifier:often preceded by there + be and followed by but, uncountable) No alternative; nothing else to be done or to have recourse to.
"You will allow there was nothing for it after this but paying honest Joe Hodges's bill and departing."
1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter 21, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC:I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to comply.
1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 5, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC:I missed the train home and I couldn't get any kind of a yoke to give me a lift. . . . So there was nothing for it only to stay the night or to foot it out.
1916, James Joyce, chapter I, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 5:There's nothing for it but to go forward, whether we know where we're going or not.
2010 June 25, Carolyn See, “Book World: Vendela Vida's The Lovers”, in Washington Post, retrieved 05 May 2015:
Forms