Word.ws English Dictionary

noust

noust noun: a trench or other hollow area, sometimes with walls, where a boat can be hauled up and left ashore.

Noun

noust (plural nousts)

  1. (Orkney, Scotland, Shetland) A trench or other hollow area, sometimes with walls, where a boat can be hauled up and left ashore.
    • Willie discovered Samuel trying to drag a strange yawl up the noust.1972, George Mackay Brown, Greenvoe, Polygon, published 2019, page 230

Forms of noust

pluralnousts

Origin of noust

From the (unattested) Norn reflex of Old Norse naust (“boathouse”). Cognate with Faroese neyst, Norwegian naust, Danish nøst (“boat-shed”).

Questions about noust

What does noust mean?
Noust means a trench or other hollow area, sometimes with walls, where a boat can be hauled up and left ashore.
What part of speech is noust?
Noust is a noun.
What is the plural of noust?
The plural of noust is nousts.

Words near noust in the dictionary

  1. nouse
  2. nousle
  3. nousled
  4. nousles
  5. nousling
  6. noust
  7. nousts
  8. nout
  9. nouthe
  10. nouthetic
  11. nouts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: noust (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: “noust.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/noust. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.