no one
- 1Used to mean not a single person, in contrast to anyone, someone, or everyone.
No one in the office knew the new password.
She promised to tell no one about the surprise party.
Oppositeeveryone, someone, anyone, everybody
Note
The pronoun takes a singular verb, as in no one was there or no one knows, and it is written as two words, unlike its partner nobody, which means the same. It has done this work for centuries: "Let no one sing in Love's disgrace," runs an English Boccaccio of 1684. Keep it apart from the plain no plus one, where one counts something: no one answer fits every case.
- 2The determiner no together with the number one, used before a singular noun to mean not a single one.
No one factor explains the drop in sales; several problems hit at once.
The museum's collection is so large that no one visit could cover it all.
Note
Here no and one keep their own jobs: no one solution means that a single solution cannot do the work alone, though several together might. Unlike the pronoun meaning nobody, it is followed by a noun, so no one athlete is about the limits of a single athlete, not about the absence of people.
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