English
Alternative forms
Noun
nothing for it (uncountable)
- (idiomatic, often followed by but) No alternative; nothing else to be done or to have recourse to.
- 1815, Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering, ch. 21:
- "You will allow there was nothing for it after this but paying honest Joe Hodges's bill and departing."
- 1853, Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ch. 5:
- I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to comply.
- 1915, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ch. 5:
- 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.
- 2010 June 25, Carolyn See, "Book World: Vendela Vida's The Lovers," Washington Post (retrieved 5 May 2015):
- There's nothing for it but to go forward, whether we know where we're going or not.