Naught or nought?
naught is a pronoun meaning “Nothing”; nought is a noun meaning “A thing or person of no worth or value; nil”. Use naught as a pronoun and nought as a noun (nought is also a pronoun: “Nothing; zero”). They sound the same (/nɔːt/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) naught is about 2.8 times as common as nought.
What is the difference between naught and nought?
| naught | nought | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | pronoun, noun | noun, adjective, verb, adverb, pronoun |
| Meaning | Nothing | A thing or person of no worth or value; nil Not any quantity of number; zero; the score of no points in a game Wicked, immoral |
| Example | Naught can come of this, you mark my words | 0.335 cm is nought/zero point three three five of a centimeter |
| Forms | nought | noughts |
| Pronunciation | /nɔːt/ /noːt/ /nɔt/ | /nɔːt/ /noːt/ /nʊt/ |
| In writing | about once in every 1 million words | about once in every 3 million words |
Sources: naught and nought in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of naught and nought
naught
- 1
Nothing
Naught can come of this, you mark my words
- 2
USdatedAlternative spelling of nought
nought
- 1
A thing or person of no worth or value; nil
- 2
Wicked, immoral
- 3
To abase, to set at nought
- 4
To no extent; in no way; not at all
- 5
Nothing; zero
- 6
Not any quantity of number; zero; the score of no points in a game
0.335 cm is nought/zero point three three five of a centimeter
- 7
Not
- 8
The figure or character representing, or having the shape of, zero
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, naught or nought?
naught appears about once in every 1 million words; nought about once in every 3 million words.
naught about once in every 1 million wordsnought about once in every 3 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search naught vs nought?
“naught vs nought” is searched about 210 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“nought vs naught”, “naught or nought”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.