NAUGHT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does naught mean? 

• NAUGHT (noun)
  The noun NAUGHT has 2 senses:

1. a quantity of no importance

2. complete failure

  Familiarity information: NAUGHT used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NAUGHT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A quantity of no importance

Classified under:

Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure

Synonyms:

aught; cipher; cypher; goose egg; nada; naught; nil; nix; nothing; null; zero; zilch; zip; zippo

Context example:

I didn't hear zilch about it

Hypernyms ("naught" is a kind of...):

relative quantity (a quantity relative to some purpose)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "naught"):

nihil ((Latin) nil; nothing (as used by a sheriff after an unsuccessful effort to serve a writ))

bugger all; Fanny Adams; fuck all; sweet Fanny Adams (little or nothing at all)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Complete failure

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Context example:

all my efforts led to naught

Hypernyms ("naught" is a kind of...):

failure (an act that fails)

 Context examples 

Norton's another monist—only he affirms naught but spirit.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

There is naught in this, for it was but saying that you were a strong and robust man, who had need of a good destrier.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There were no trees, no shrubs, no grasses—naught but a tremendous and terrible desolation that sent fear swiftly dawning into his eyes.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Then he wandered quite blind about the forest, ate nothing but roots and berries, and did naught but lament and weep over the loss of his dearest wife.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Still, she allowed, "the owd maister was like other folk—naught mich out o' t' common way: stark mad o' shooting, and farming, and sich like."

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Then naught came up out of the blackness save a heavy panting of some creature struggling sorely for air.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I know that my aunt distressed Dora's aunts very much, by utterly setting at naught the dignity of fly-conveyance, and walking out to Putney at extraordinary times, as shortly after breakfast or just before tea; likewise by wearing her bonnet in any manner that happened to be comfortable to her head, without at all deferring to the prejudices of civilization on that subject.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

For Sir Alleyne Edricson and for his beautiful bride the future had also naught but what was good.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

All his books, and his grand friends who visited him in carriages or with countless bottles of whiskey, went for naught.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Marsh End had belonged to the Rivers ever since it was a house: and it was, she affirmed, aboon two hundred year old—for all it looked but a small, humble place, naught to compare wi' Mr. Oliver's grand hall down i' Morton Vale.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)