Word.ws English Dictionary

worth

UK/ˈwɜːθ//wɝθ/

worth adjective: having a value of; proper to be exchanged for.

Adjective

worth (not comparable)

  1. Having a value of; proper to be exchanged for.
    • How much / What is your house worth? - Now it's worth half what I paid for it. So it'd sure would be worthwhile to repair before putting it for sale.
    • Cleanliness is a virtue worth more than others.
  2. Deserving of.
    • This rickety beater of a car isn’t worth repairing anymore.
    • He found going to the Edinburgh Castle was worth it.
  3. (obsolete, except in Scots) Valuable, worthwhile.
  4. Making a fair equivalent of, repaying or compensating.
    • This job is hardly worth the effort.

Noun

worth (countable and uncountable, plural worths)

  1. Value.
    • I’ll have a dollar's worth of candy, please.
    • They have proven their worths as individual fighting men and their worth as a unit.
  2. (uncountable) Merit, excellence.
    • Our new director is a man whose worth is well acknowledged.
    • Manchester United's Tom Cleverley impressed on his first competitive start and Lampard demonstrated his continued worth at international level in a performance that was little more than a stroll once England swiftly exerted their obvious authority.2012 September 7, Phil McNulty, “Moldova 0-5 England”, in BBC Sport
  3. (uncountable) An amount that could be achieved or produced in a specified time.
    • Although most modern OTDR equipment can store at least eight days' worth of data (in line with current industry standards), when it was downloaded from the Class 57s involved, it was discovered they had stored just over eight hours' worth of data.2020 November 18, “Network News: Lack of safety compliance a factor in Loughborough SPAD”, in Rail, page 25
  4. (obsolete, uncountable) High social standing, noble rank.
    • VVhat bee they men of any worth or no? […]
      No my good Lord, they bee men of no great account,
      For they bee none but Tylers, Thatchers, Millers, and ſuch like.1593, anonymous author, The Life and Death of Iacke Straw […], →OCLC, Act I

Verb

worth (third-person singular simple present worths, present participle worthing, simple past worth or worthed, past participle worth or worthed or worthen)

  1. (obsolete, except in set phrases or dialectal) To be, become, betide.
    • Sonne of man, prophecie and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Howle ye, woe worth the day.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 30:2
    • For, adds our erudite Friend, the Saxon weorthan equivalent to the German werden, means to grow, to become; traces of which old vocable are still found in the North-country dialects, as, ‘What is word of him?’ meaning ‘What is become of him?’ and the like. Nay we in modern English still say, ‘Woe...1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. 3, Landlord Edmund”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk)

Proper noun capitalized: Worth

Worth (countable and uncountable, plural Worths)

  1. A village and civil parish in Dover district, Kent (OS grid ref TR3356).
  2. A civil parish in Mid Sussex district, West Sussex, which formerly included the village.
  3. A village in Crawley borough, West Sussex (OS grid ref TQ3036).
  4. A river in West Yorkshire, the River Worth, which joins the River Aire at Keighley.
  5. An unincorporated community in Turner County, Georgia.
  6. A village in Cook County, Illinois.
  7. A village in Worth County, Missouri.
  8. A town in Jefferson County, New York.
  9. A number of townships in the United States, listed under Worth Township.
  10. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Worth County.
  11. A municipality in Herzogtum Lauenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
  12. (countable) A surname.

worth meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Arabic and Indonesian

worth in Hindi

deserving of
लायक़ lāyaq, मूल्य mūlya, योग्य yogya, क़द्र qadra
value
क़ीमत qīmat, क़द्र qadra

worth in Tamil

value
மதிப்பு matippu

worth in Arabic

equal in value to
مَاثَلَ māṯala
deserving of
اِسْتَحَقَّ istaḥaqqa, اِسْتَأْهَلَ istaʔhala
making a fair equivalent of
اِسْتَحَقَّ istaḥaqqa
value
قِيمَة qīma

worth in Indonesian

value
nilai, bobot

Examples of worth in a sentence

  • A painting once thought to be worth thousands that is actually not worth much.
  • Is it well worth visiting your hometown? -Nah, Leicester is not worth it at all.
  • I think you’ll find my proposal worth your attention.
  • I didn't think it worth complaining about his friendship not being worth having.
  • stocks having a worth of two million pounds; £2 million worth of stock
  • Woe worth the man that crosses me.

All 40 example sentences with worth

Forms of worth

Noun
pluralworths
Verb
third-person singular presentworths
present participleworthing
pastworth
pastworthed
past participleworth
past participleworthed
past participleworthen
alternative formword
Proper noun
pluralWorths

Origin of worth

From Middle English worth, from Old English weorþ, from Proto-West Germanic *werþ, from Proto-Germanic *werþaz (“worthy, valuable”); from Proto-Indo-European *wert-. Cognate with Scots wirth (“worth”), Cimbrian bèart (“worth, value”), Dutch waard, weerd (“worth”), German wert (“worth”) (the source of Polish wart (“worth”), Ukrainian вартість (vartistʹ, “worth, value”), etc), Luxembourgish wäert (“worth”), Yiddish ווערט (vert), ווערד (verd, “worth, value”), Danish værd (“worth”), Faroese and Icelandic verður (“worth”), Norwegian Bokmål verdt (“worth”), Norwegian Nynorsk verd (“worth”), Swedish värd (“worth”), Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌹𐍂𐌸 (wairþ, “worth, value”), Welsh gwerth (“worth, value”).

From Middle English worthen, wurthen, werthen (“to be; exist; come into being; come into existence”), from Old English weorþan (“to come into being; be made; become; arise; be”), from Proto-West Germanic *werþan, from Proto-Germanic *werþaną (“to come about; happen; come into being; become”), from Proto-Indo-European *wert- (“to turn; turn out”). Cognate with Dutch worden, dated Low German warrn, German werden, Old Norse verða (Norwegian verta, Swedish varda), Latin vertere.

From Old English worþ (“enclosure”)

Words formed from worth

Phrases with worth

10 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with worth

2 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about worth

What does worth mean?
Worth means having a value of; proper to be exchanged for.
What is worth in Hindi?
Worth in Hindi is लायक़ (lāyaq), मूल्य (mūlya), योग्य (yogya). See Worth meaning in Hindi.
How do you use worth in a sentence?
A painting once thought to be worth thousands that is actually not worth much.
What part of speech is worth?
Worth can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce worth?
Worth is pronounced /ˈwɜːθ/ (UK).

Words near worth in the dictionary

  1. Wortabet
  2. wortamanin
  3. wortamannin
  4. wortcraft
  5. wortcunning
  6. worth
  7. worth a Jew's eye
  8. Worth County
  9. Worth disease
  10. worth every penny
  11. worth it

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: worth (page history and authors); Worth (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-us-worth.ogg.

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