naught

noun

1. nothing.
2. a cipher (0); zero.

adjective

3. lost; ruined.
4. Archaic. worthless; useless.
5. Obsolete. morally bad; wicked.

adverb

6. Obsolete. not.

Idioms

7. come to naught, to come to nothing; be without result or fruition; fail.
8. set at naught, to regard or treat as of no importance; disdain: He entered a milieu that set his ideals at naught.

noun

1. archaic, or literary nothing or nothingness; ruin or failure
2. a variant spelling (esp US) of nought
3. set at naught to have disregard or scorn for; disdain

adverb

4. archaic, or literary not at allit matters naught

adjective

5. obsolete worthless, ruined, or wicked

n.Old English nawiht “nothing,” lit “no whit,” from na “no” (from PIE root *ne- “no, not;” see un- (1)) + wiht “thing, creature, being” (see wight). Cognate with Old Saxon neowiht “nothing,” Old High German niwiht, Gothic ni waihts. It also developed an adjectival sense in Old English, “good for nothing,” which by mid-16c. had focused to “morally bad, wicked.” In arithmetic, “the figure zero” from 1640s. see come to nothing (naught).