nowt
nowt Lexical Profile
nowt Game Scores & Validity
• pronoun
British Nothing; not anything (chiefly Northern England and Scotland).
"There's nowt wrong with a bit of hard work on a cold morning."
• noun
British Zero; the cipher 0, or a state of nonexistence or worthlessness (chiefly Northern England and Scotland).
"All our months of careful planning came to nowt when the funding was pulled."
Scottish Domesticated bovine animals of the genus Bos kept as livestock; cattle or oxen (chiefly Scotland and Northern England).
"The drover herded a score of black nowt across the moorland pasture."
Scottish A dull, clumsy, or stupid person.
"He stood there like a great lumbering nowt, unsure of what to say."
• adverb
British In no way; not at all (chiefly Northern England and Scotland).
"The old stone cottage had changed nowt since his grandfather's day."
Word Nuance & Usage
In Northern English dialects, 'nowt' is the standard counterpart to 'owt' (anything), frequently paired in traditional expressions such as 'you don't get owt for nowt' (you don't get anything for nothing).
• Rhymes for nowt
Word Origin & Etymology
In the sense of 'nothing', it is a Northern English and Scottish dialectal variant of 'naught', from Old English nāwiht ('no thing'). In the sense of 'cattle', it derives from Old Norse naut, cognate with the archaic English word 'neat'.