nothing doing
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Refusing or rejecting something
Literally: no activity or progress
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
I did touch them one time you see but of course there was nothing doing he wan me!
She's talked about going to Yorkshire, but, not at the moment, there's nothing much doing in the market, er.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “nothing doing” mean?
Refusing or rejecting something Literally: no activity or progress
Is “nothing doing” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.