Word.ws English Dictionary

naught

UK/nɔːt/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/noːt/

naught pronoun: nothing. Also the alternative spelling of nought.

Pronoun

naught

  1. Nothing.
    • Naught can come of this, you mark my words.
    • Eat! Drink! Love! for all else is naught.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 215

Noun

naught (countable and uncountable, plural naughts)

  1. (archaic) Nothingness.

Also used as

naught is also the alternative spelling of nought.

Examples of naught in a sentence

  • But that was naught to my old mate, he didn't mind at all.1994, Mike Hayes, Tell Us Anothree! More yarns from all around Australia, Sydney: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, published 2001...
  • My day starts where yesterday's had finished - at St Pancras, only this time on Thameslink and the subterranean station I first visited when it was naught but an empty box.2022 November 16, Paul Bigland, “From rural branches to high-speed arteries”, in RAIL, number 970, page 56:

All 12 example sentences with naught

Forms of naught

Pronoun
alternative formnought
Noun
pluralnaughts

Origin of naught

From the Middle English naught, nought, naht, nawiht, from Old English nawiht. Cognate with West Frisian neat (“nothing, naught”). Doublet of nought. Equivalent to ne + aught.

Words formed from naught

Phrases with naught

Words that rhyme with naught

22 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about naught

What does naught mean?
Naught means nothing.
How do you use naught in a sentence?
But that was naught to my old mate, he didn't mind at all.
What part of speech is naught?
Naught can be a pronoun or a noun.
How do you pronounce naught?
Naught is pronounced /nɔːt/ (UK).

Words near naught in the dictionary

  1. naufragous
  2. nauga
  3. naugahide
  4. naugahyde
  5. Naugatuck
  6. naught
  7. naughtier
  8. naughties
  9. naughtiest
  10. naughtily
  11. naughtiness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: naught (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-nought.ogg.

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