What does annulling mean?
'Annulling' is the present participle of the verb 'annul', meaning to declare officially that something — most often a marriage, a contract, or a legal decision — is null and void, as though it had never validly existed. It appears chiefly in formal legal and ecclesiastical contexts: courts annul contracts judged defective from the start, and religious authorities annul marriages deemed never to have been sacramentally valid. This gives the word a distinct character compared with cancellation or termination, which end arrangements that were previously in force; annulment instead negates the arrangement retroactively. The term derives ultimately from the Latin 'nullus', meaning 'nothing', via 'annullare', and its cognates include 'nullify' and 'nullity'. Precise, weighty, and unambiguously formal, 'annulling' is a word whose force lies in erasure — turning a documented act into a legal non-event.
verb (present participle of 'annul')The act of declaring something officially invalid or void, especially a marriage, contract, or legal decision. As a verb form, 'annulling' is the present participle of 'annul', used in continuous constructions.
- To declare formally that a marriage, contract, judgment, or other legal act is null and void, as though it never existed.
- (By extension) to cancel or invalidate any arrangement, agreement, or result.
"The church court spent months annulling the marriage after discovering it had never been validly consummated."
"The tribunal was criticised for annulling votes cast in the disputed districts."
"After weeks of deliberation, the judge ruled in favour of annulling the merger agreement."
The word 'annul' comes from Latin 'nullus' — literally 'nothing' — so when you annul a marriage or contract, you are legally reducing it to nothing, as if it had never existed at all.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of annulling
The word traces back to the Latin verb 'annullare', formed from 'ad-' ('to, towards') plus 'nullus' ('nothing'), giving the literal sense of reducing something to nothing. It entered English in the medieval period through Old French, initially in legal usage concerning the voiding of acts and decrees. Its Latin root also underlies the related English terms 'nullify', 'nullity', and 'annihilation' (via 'nihil', 'nothing').
Related word forms
How annulling is actually used
'Annulling' is formal and almost exclusively legal or ecclesiastical in register; everyday cancellations are more often described simply as 'cancelled'. The verb implies the act was void from the outset or rendered void, rather than terminated after being validly in force — a distinction that matters most in marriage law, where annulment differs fundamentally from divorce.
Easily confused with annulling
'Annual' means occurring once every year, whereas 'annulling' means officially declaring something void — they differ only subtly in spelling and pronunciation.