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Taka Posted 22 years ago
Vocabulary

Here goes nothing

Why does "Here goes nothing" have almost the same meaning as "Here we go"? I mean, it's "nothing"...you know...
  

Top answer

They don't mean the same, Taka. 'Here goes nothing' means 'I am going to begin, but I think I will not succeed, or I think it will be very difficult to accomplish'. 'Here we go' just means, well, 'here we go, we are starting'; it also sometimes means 'here we are' upon arrival or success.

— Mister Micawber

  • They don't mean the same, Taka.
  • 'Here goes nothing' means 'I am going to begin, but I think I will not succeed, or I think it will be very difficult to accomplish'.
  • 'Here we go' just means, well, 'here we go, we are starting'; it also sometimes means 'here we are' upon arrival or success.
  • Both are informal, idiomatic, primarily spoken English, and as far as the 'nothing' is concerned, I can't really place it grammatically.
  • I suppose that it refers to the expectation that the result will be zero.
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15 Answers
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They don't mean the same, Taka. 'Here goes nothing' means 'I am going to begin, but I think I will not succeed, or I think it will be very difficult to accomplish'. 'Here we go' just means, well, 'here we go, we are starting'; it also sometimes means 'here we are' upon arrival or success.

Both are informal, idiomatic, primarily spoken English, and as far as the 'nothing' is concerned,
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"They don't mean the same, Taka. 'Here goes nothing' means 'I am going to begin, but I think I will not succeed"

I know. That's why I said "almost" the same.

Anyway, thank you for the explanation!
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0 Think it was meant to be something like: Here (it either goes all the way, or then) nothing (happens). Just that over time, that middle part's now skipped, as implied. 0-
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0Hi,02br
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01font00Why does "Here goes nothing" have almost the same meaning as "Here we go"? I mean, it's "nothing"...you know... 02font02br
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01font00I agree with the comments that they do not have the same meaning, but I don't entirely agree with the rest of what's been said so far. 0
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0 I agree with Mister Micawber. His explanation is perfect. 0-
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0 01blockquote
01cite10Clive12cite11font10Thus, the meaning of the two phrases is not even 'almost' the same.12font12br
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10I agree that the phrases are not almost the same at all, though I am more familiar with MM's depiction of its use.0-
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clive's explanation would make much more sense to me if it ended with "there is too much risk involved and i will not bet money on it. here goes nought dollars as a bet on my sucess".

well, i'm not quite convinced anyway =)
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ex.


A: I have never tried snowboarding before. Well, here goes nothing.


This means we think we won’t be good at snowboarding, because we haven’t tried it before, but we will try anyway.
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Anon, I'm not sure I agree with you. It could also simply be that the person is saying they have nothing to lose, it's not important if they don't do well. But it's not necessarily the case that the person doesn't think it will have good results. (Granted, with snowboarding, it's unlikley it will be great - but change it to a new recipe - no reason to think it won't turn out well, but it's not bi
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Check this idiom site:

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here goes nothing
meaning one is starting something that one doubts will succeed

http://www.answers.com/topic/here-goes
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