come to nought
"come-to-nought" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“come to nought” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To fail completely; to have no successful result.
Corpus desk
Index EN-come-to-nought · come to nought · English
come to nought · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | come to nought |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “come to nought” in English
Rare enough to double-check
come to nought is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "To fail completely; to have no successful result.".
come to nought doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is come to nought, spelled C-O-M-E- -T-O- -N-O-U-G-H-T.
Definition
- 1To fail completely; to have no successful result.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how come to nought appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The Bank of England's anti-inflation efforts will come to nought if the U.S. Federal Reserve refuse to join in the plan.
As he pointed out, however, there was "still more to come". By 1977-78, "the use of the first Advanced Passenger Trains will reduce journey times between London and Glasgow to four hours". It was a grand statement of optimism that would sadly come to nought.
Synonyms
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.