Word.ws English Dictionary

come to naught

come to naught is the alternative form of come to nought.

Meaning of come to nought

Verb

come to nought (third-person singular simple present comes to nought, present participle coming to nought, simple past came to nought, past participle come to nought)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To fail completely; to have no successful result.
    • The Bank of England's anti-inflation efforts will come to nought if the U.S. Federal Reserve refuse to join in the plan.
    Synonyms:
    come to nothing

Forms of come to naught

third-person singular presentcomes to naught
present participlecoming to naught
pastcame to naught
past participlecome to naught

Questions about come to naught

What is come to naught the alternative form of?
Come to naught is the alternative form of come to nought.

Words near come to naught in the dictionary

  1. come to Jesus
  2. come to life
  3. come to light
  4. come to mention it
  5. come to mind
  6. come to naught
  7. come to nothing
  8. come to nought
  9. come to one's hand
  10. come to one's senses
  11. come to oneself

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: come to naught (page history and authors); come 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: “come to naught.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/come_to_naught. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.