What is the source of the expression "nothing at all"?

Question

I'm looking for the source of the distinction between "nothing" and the nearly equivalent phrase "nothing at all."  In common usage the two are synonymous, but the preposition "at all" seems to suggest a more nuanced logic:  "Nothing," but a nothing coinciding in the place of "all." The latter speaks less to the negation of the presence something and more to the condition of a gap in a totality.

I've seen definitions of the Latin nil being equally "nothing" or "nothing at all;" if this is the case, I wonder when and where the equivocation comes from.

Erik Kowal · Answer

At all is simply an intensifying additional element without any inherent grammatical purpose, and is found in other contexts too, not just in the expression 'nothing at all':

Do you listen to what I tell you at all?
You don't seem at all interested in what I'm saying.
Have you studied for your exam at all?

Jun-Dai Bates-Kobashigawa · Answer

Isn't the at all meant to rule out the sort of something that is so insignificant as to be effectively nothing? I take nothing at all to be similar to not even a little bit (or absolutely nothing). The at all emphasises that it is not only the case that there is nothing, it is also the case that there isn't even a small amount of something that most people would consider nothing.

Even better: less than nothing.

What is the source of the expression "nothing at all"?

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