nought

noun, adjective, adverb

1. 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 Also: naught, ought, aught

1. the digit 0; zero: used esp in counting or numbering

noun, adjective, adverb

2. a variant spelling of 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 nowiht “nothing,” variant of nawiht (see naught). Meaning “zero, cipher” is from early 15c. Expression for nought “in vain” is late 13c. To come to nought is from 1590s. 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).