Quoted from RFC 7816, section 3:
A problem can also appear when a name server does not react properly
to ENTs (Empty Non-Terminals). If ent.example.com has no resource
records but foobar.ent.example.com does, then ent.example.com is an
ENT. Whatever the QTYPE, a query for ent.example.com must return
NODATA (NOERROR / ANSWER: 0). However, some name servers incorrectly
return NXDOMAIN for ENTs. If a resolver queries only
foobar.ent.example.com, everything will be OK, but if it implements
QNAME minimisation, it may query ent.example.com and get an NXDOMAIN.
See also Section 3 of [DNS-Res-Improve] for the other bad
consequences of this bad behaviour.