ingen

Ingen is a term used in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish to express negation of existence or quantity. It functions as a determiner before a noun or as a pronoun meaning “no” or “none,” and it is commonly employed to indicate the absence of something. For example, in Danish or Norwegian you can say "ingen bøker" or "ingen bøker" to mean “no books,” and in Swedish you might hear “ingen idé” meaning “no idea.” It can also stand alone as a pronoun, as in "Ingen kom" (“No one came”).

In Danish and Norwegian, ingen is generally used in front of a noun without requiring agreement for gender or number in everyday usage. As a pronoun, it can denote the absence of people or things, such as "Der er ingen der ved det" (“There is no one here who knows”). In Swedish, the word inflects for gender and number in its adjective-pronoun role: "ingen" before common-gender singular nouns, "inget" before neuter singular, and "inga" for plural.

Etymologically, ingen derives from Germanic roots related to negation and the concept of “not one” or “not any.” The term is widespread in Scandinavian languages and remains a common part of everyday negation, used in formal and informal contexts alike. It frequently appears in fixed phrases and idioms, where it helps convey total absence or lack rather than a specific quantity. While similar across languages, its exact forms and concord with nouns vary by language and, in Swedish, by gender and number.