nothing for it

• nothing else for it

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

nothing for it (uncountable)

1. (idiomatic, often followed by but) No alternative; nothing else to be done or to have recourse to.
   • 1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter 21, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC:

     "You will allow there was nothing for it after this but paying honest Joe Hodges's bill and departing."

   • 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 5, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC:

     I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to comply.

   • 1916 December 29, James Joyce, chapter I, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 5:

     I missed the train home and I couldn't get any kind of a yoke to give me a lift. . . . So there was nothing for it only to stay the night or to foot it out.

   • 2010 June 25, Carolyn See, “Book World: Vendela Vida's The Lovers”, in Washington Post, retrieved 5 May 2015:

     There's nothing for it but to go forward, whether we know where we're going or not.

• “nothing for it”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.