Word.ws English Dictionary

bring to nought

bring to nought verb: to mar; to thwart.

Verb

bring to nought (third-person singular simple present brings to nought, present participle bringing to nought, simple past and past participle brought to nought)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To mar; to thwart.
    • Mr. Rattray remarks on the fine spirit of the men, even when faced with the disappointment of seeing their efforts brought to nought by subsequent storms.1941 April, “Notes and News: Railwaymen and Snow”, in Railway Magazine, page 178

Forms of bring to nought

third-person singular presentbrings to nought
present participlebringing to nought
past participlebrought to nought
pastbrought to nought
alternative formbring to naught

Questions about bring to nought

What does bring to nought mean?
Bring to nought means to mar; to thwart.
What part of speech is bring to nought?
Bring to nought is a verb.
What is the past tense of bring to nought?
The past tense of bring to nought is brought to nought.

Words near bring to nought in the dictionary

  1. bring to justice
  2. bring to life
  3. bring to light
  4. bring to mind
  5. bring to naught
  6. bring to nought
  7. bring to order
  8. bring to orgasm
  9. bring to pass
  10. bring to terms
  11. bring to the hammer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bring to nought (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bring to nought.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bring_to_nought. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.