Word.ws English Dictionary

nao

/naʊ/

nao noun: a Spanish or Portuguese carrack. Also the deliberate misspelling of now.

Noun

nao (plural naos)

  1. (historical, rare) A Spanish or Portuguese carrack.
    • I got vivid descriptions of the sea battle at Chaul from the Mamluk sailors and the Ottoman gunners so that I could clearly visualise the Mamluk galleys and the Ottoman guns battling the Portuguese naos at the entrance of the Kundalika river.2007, Eusebio L. Rodrigues, Love and Samsāra

Proper noun (1) capitalized: NAO

NAO

  1. (US, abbreviation, historical, initialism) Initialism of National Applications Office: a former agent of the United States Department of Homeland Security.
  2. (UK, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of National Audit Office.
  3. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Nautical Almanac Office.
  4. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of North Atlantic oscillation.
  5. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of Nenets Autonomous Okrug: a federal subject of Russia.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Nao

Nao

  1. A female or male given name from Japanese.

Also used as

nao is also the deliberate misspelling of now.

Forms of nao

pluralnaos

Origin of nao

Borrowed from Spanish nao.

Phrases with nao

Words that rhyme with nao

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about nao

What does nao mean?
Nao means a Spanish or Portuguese carrack.
What part of speech is nao?
Nao can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce nao?
Nao is pronounced /naʊ/.
What is the plural of nao?
The plural of nao is naos.

Words near nao in the dictionary

  1. Nanzheng
  2. Nanzhili
  3. Nanzi
  4. Nanzian
  5. Nanzih
  6. nao
  7. NaOCl
  8. Naoero
  9. Naoeroan
  10. Naogaon District
  11. NaOH

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nao (page history and authors); NAO (page history and authors); Nao (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.

Last updated:

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