Nowt

//naʊt// adv, noun, pron

adv, noun, pron ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Naught, nothing. Northern-England, uncountable
  2. 2
    An ox. Northern-England, Scotland
  3. 3
    A herd of cattle. Northern-England, Scotland
  4. 4
    A dumb, crass, or clumsy person, or a person who is difficult or stubborn. Northern-England, Scotland, figuratively

    "A hunner guineas for the heid o' that nowt Renwick, and him no' sae very far awa' frae your very nose at this meenit."

Adverb
  1. 1
    Naught, nothing. Northern-England, not-comparable
Pronoun
  1. 1
    Naught, nothing. Northern-England

    "Today I have achieved absolutely nowt / In just being out of the house, I've lost out"

Synonyms

All synonyms
nootnootnothingzero

Antonyms

All antonyms
owt

Example

More examples

"Since he had nowt to do, he went into the city centre."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Dialectal pronunciation of naught. Akin to West Frisian neat (“nothing”), German nichts (“nothing”).

Etymology 2

From Middle English nowte, noute, nawte, naute, borrowed from Old Norse naut, from Proto-Germanic *nautą. Cognate with Old English nēat, English neat.

Related phrases

shy bairns get nowtthere's nowt so queer as folkyou don't get owt for nowt

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.