This type is used primarily to facilitate the is (pending) syntax of traits FlatSpec and WordSpec, as well the is (pending) or (pending) syntax of several traits in the org.scalatest.fixturepackage. Because the pending method in Suite always completes abruptly with an exception, its type would be inferred to be Nothing, which is a relatively common type. To make sure syntax like is (pending) only works with method pending, it is helpful to have a specially named "Nothing" type.