Ort
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A fragment; a scrap of leftover food; any remainder; a piece of refuse. plural-normally
"[…]the rich ate and drank freely, and accepted gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families, and the poor thought that the rich were entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly life; besides, their feasting caused a multiplication of orts, which were the heirlooms of the poor."
- 2 Initialism of oral rehydration therapy. abbreviation, alt-of, countable, initialism, uncountable
- 3 A small coin, formerly used in central Europe. historical
"ORT (French), the gross weight; garbage or refuse; a Norwegian coin of 24 skillings, also called a mark, and equal to 9 1/2 d.; an Hungarian coin, containing 12 kreutzers; in Poland, 5 orts make a rix-dollar; also a Swedish money equal to 2 farthings, sometimes called a runstick."
- 1 To turn away from with disgust; refuse. dialectal, transitive
Example
More examples"[…]the rich ate and drank freely, and accepted gout and apoplexy as things that ran mysteriously in respectable families, and the poor thought that the rich were entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly life; besides, their feasting caused a multiplication of orts, which were the heirlooms of the poor."
Etymology
From Middle English orte, from Old English *oreta (“that which is left after eating”, literally “out-eat”); for more, see Old English or-, English eat. Cognate with Middle Low German orte (“refuse of food”), Middle Dutch ooraete, ooreete, Low German ort (“ort”), Middle High German urez, German Uräß and also German Ort (“quarter (of a thaler, etc)”). As the term for a coin, probably borrowed from the central European languages which used it: German Ort (“quarter (of a thaler)”), Polish ort (“coin”), etc.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.