The relation between a certain scale and its low extremity is not always that direct and obvious. Several nouns which are part of idioms of minimal degree are no logical end points on a specific scale, for instance een hout (a piece of wood), een barst (a crack), een moer (a nut), and een kip (a chicken) in Dutch:

i


 Ik verdien er geen hout aan.
I earn there no piece-of-wood on.
`I don't earn anything with that business.'
ii


 Ik snap er geen barst van.
I understand there no crack of.
`I don't understand anything of it.'
iii


 Ik heb er geen moer aan gedaan.
I have there no nut on done.
`I haven't done anything.'
iv


Er was geen kip op straat.
There was no chicken on street.
`There wasn't anybody outside.'

These nouns have undergone a process of semantic bleaching; in these particular environments their meaning is equivalent to the negative expressions niks (nothing/anything) or niemand (nobody/anybody).

There are even nouns which have no clear lexical meaning of their own, such as Dutch snars and zier and English jot and toss. They exist only for the purpose of denoting some non-specified meaning of minimal quantity, and appear in scale-reversing environments only.

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