here goes nothing
1
7.8
- idiom
- Informal
:
a ver qué pasa
- Oh, here goes nothing.
And I remember being like, all right, like, like here goes nothing, you know, like this could destroy us.
- And I remember being like, all right, like, like here goes nothing, you know, like this could destroy us.
Examples
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And I remember being like, all right, like, like here goes nothing, you know, like this could destroy us.
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All right, here goes nothing and we are oh, look at that.
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-OK, here goes nothing.
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Before jumping off the high diving board, he took a deep breath and said, here goes nothing.
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As she submitted her application for a job she wasn't sure she would get, she thought, here goes nothing.
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Facing the challenging exam, he muttered to himself, here goes nothing, as he opened the booklet.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The construction 'here goes...' signals the start of an action and 'nothing' conveys low or no expected result, so a learner who knows the words could plausibly infer this is said before attempting something unlikely to succeed. However, the phrase functions as a conventionalized pragmatic marker and its precise use as a pre-attempt comment is idiomatic rather than fully compositional, so comprehension is not guaranteed without exposure.
Etymology
The phrase here goes nothing comes from the simple image of someone beginning an action they expect will probably fail. By saying here, meaning 'now', goes, meaning 'it starts', and nothing, meaning 'nothing will happen', the person shows low hope, so today people use it before trying something 'risky' or when they are 'not sure' it will work.