Word.ws English Dictionary

know-nothing

know-nothing adjective: ignorant; characterized by foolish denial of facts or beliefs in that which is not true.

Adjective

know-nothing (not comparable)

  1. Ignorant; characterized by foolish denial of facts or beliefs in that which is not true.
    • All over the world, know-nothing xenophobes are claiming – without evidence – that climate science is rigged.2017 February 20, Paul Mason, “Climate scepticism is a far-right badge of honour – even in sweltering Australia”, in the Guardian

Noun (1)

know-nothing (plural know-nothings)

  1. An ignorant person; one who lacks knowledge.
    Synonyms:
    ignoramus

Noun (2) capitalized: Know-Nothing

Know-Nothing (plural Know-Nothings)

  1. (US, historical) A member of a secret antiforeigner political organization in the nineteenth-century United States.
    • The legacy of the Know-Nothings lived beyond its life as an organization. The seeds of bigotry, fear and hatred bore fruit again in the years after the Civil War.[…]
      The First World War led to another outbreak of nativism. A new group, adopting the program of the Know-Nothings and the name of the...1964, John F. Kennedy, “Immigration Policy”, in A Nation of Immigrants, Revised and Enlarged edition, Harper & Row, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 71

Synonyms of know-nothing

Forms of know-nothing

pluralknow-nothings
pluralKnow-Nothings

Origin of know-nothing

Essentially deverbal in nature, albeit not from a unitary phrasal verb. Compare do-nothing § Etymology.

Party members claimed to know nothing about the party when questioned.

Words formed from know-nothing

Questions about know-nothing

What does know-nothing mean?
Know-nothing means ignorant; characterized by foolish denial of facts or beliefs in that which is not true.
What part of speech is know-nothing?
Know-nothing can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near know-nothing in the dictionary

  1. know-how
  2. know-it-all
  3. know-it-allery
  4. know-it-allism
  5. know-it-alls
  6. know-nothing
  7. Know-Nothingism
  8. know-nothingness
  9. know-nothings
  10. knowabilities
  11. knowability

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: know-nothing (page history and authors); Know-Nothing (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: “know-nothing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/know-nothing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.