Word.ws English Dictionary

taught

/tɔːt/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/toːt/

taught is the simple past and past participle of teach.

taught is the misspelling of taut.

Meaning of teach

Verb

teach (third-person singular simple present teaches, present participle teaching, simple past and past participle taught)

  1. (ditransitive) To pass on knowledge to.
    • Can you teach me to sew? Can you teach sewing to me?
    Synonyms:
    educate, instruct
  2. (intransitive, stative) To pass on knowledge generally, especially as one's profession; to act as a teacher.
    • She used to teach at university.
    Antonyms:
    learn
  3. (ditransitive) To cause (someone) to learn or understand (something).
    • The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;[…]. Now she had come to look upon the matter in its true proportions, and her anticipation of a possible chance of teaching him a lesson was a pleasure...1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC
  4. (ditransitive) To cause to know the disagreeable consequences of some action.
    • I'll teach you to make fun of me!
  5. (obsolete, transitive) To show (someone) the way; to guide, conduct; to point, indicate.
    • ‘The bliss is there’, mumbled the old man and taught to Heaven.

See all 8 meanings of teach

Meaning of taut

Adjective

taut (comparative tauter, superlative tautest)

  1. Of a body, muscle, etc., not flabby; firm, toned.
    • I watched him from the side as he strode along. His walk was quite different; his face too looked tauter.2014, Erich Maria Remarque, translated by Michael Hofmann, The Promised Land: Translated from the German, London: Vintage Books, →ISBN, page 285
  2. Of a person, having a lean, strong body.
  3. Of music, writing, etc., containing only relevant parts; brief and controlled.
    • If he curbs his swing a little and gets something crisper and tauter in his methods he may yet be very good.1921 March 19, Bernard Darwin, “Golf on the Forest”, in Peter Anderson Graham, editor, Country Life, volume XLIX, number 1263, London: George Newnes […], →OCLC, page 321, column 2
  4. (figuratively) Under tension, like a stretched bowstring, rope, or sail; tight.
    • The pressure pad which holds the film taut as it passes the reproducing light beam must apply just the right amount of pressure.1929, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Fundamentals of Sound Recording, page 192
  5. (figuratively) Experiencing anxiety or stress.
    • His outward appearance was calm, but inside he was very taut.1989, Faye Kellerman, The Quality of Mercy, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow and Company, →ISBN
  6. (figuratively) Of a sailor, ship, etc., neat and well-disciplined.
    • [O]ur friend was a hearty toper in the days of his Whiggery, but no sooner turned one of the tautest of Tories, than he took to the tea-pot. It seems a thing against nature.1832 September, John Wilson, W[illia]m Maginn, J[ohn] G[ibson] Lockhart, James Hogg [et al.], Noctes Ambrosianæ […], volume V, number LXII, New York, N.Y.: Redfield […], published 1854, →OCLC, page 76

See all 9 meanings of taut

Origin of taught

From Middle English taught(e), tau(h)t(e), from Old English tāhte, tǣhte, from Proto-Germanic *taihtē.

Words formed from taught

Phrases with taught

Words that rhyme with taught

22 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about taught

What is taught the simple past and past participle of?
Taught is the simple past and past participle of teach.
How do you pronounce taught?
Taught is pronounced /tɔːt/ (UK).

Words near taught in the dictionary

  1. taugeh
  2. Tauger
  3. Taugers
  4. Taugetus
  5. Taughannock
  6. taught
  7. taught away
  8. taught grandma how to suck eggs
  9. taught grandma to suck eggs
  10. taught someone a lesson
  11. taught someone who was the boss

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: taught (page history and authors); teach (page history and authors); taut (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-taught.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Pvanp7-taught.wav, en-us-taught.ogg.

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