Link Centre Dictionary

aught

UK/ɔːt/ US/oːt/ uncommon archaic obsolete rare

noun

1.

a quantity of no importance

  • “it looked like nothing I had ever seen before”
  • “reduced to nil all the work we had done”
  • “we racked up a pathetic goose egg”
  • “it was all for naught”
  • “I didn”

Origin

From Middle English aught (“estimation, regard, reputation”), from Old English ǣht (“estimation, consideration”), from Proto-West Germanic *ahtu. Cognate with Dutch acht (“attention, regard, heed”), German Acht (“attention, regard”). Also see ettle.

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WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.