naught

"Naught" can mean "nothing" or "zero," but it often feels older and more dramatic than those everyday words. You will often meet it in phrases like "come to naught" or "for naught," where it suggests that something failed or was done with no result. In older writing, it can also mean "nothing at all" in a broad sense, as in "'Tis naught," meaning "It is nothing" or "It does not matter." There is also an old adjective use meaning "bad" or "wicked," though that sense is much less common now.

The word "naught" comes from Old English nāwiht, meaning "nothing" or literally "no thing." In modern English, its main job is to mean "nothing" or "zero," but it usually sounds older, literary, or poetic rather than plain and modern.

One common use appears in the phrase "come to naught." If a plan comes to naught, it fails and leads to nothing. Another common phrase is "for naught," which means "for nothing" or "in vain." If you work hard and the result is lost, your effort was for naught. In some contexts, especially when reading numbers aloud, "naught" can also mean "zero."

You also see it in older lines such as "'Tis naught," where it simply means "it is nothing" or "it is of no importance." Because of that history, the word often carries a tone of emptiness, failure, or lost effort. That tone is part of why it still shows up in stories, poems, and dramatic speech.

There is also an older adjective sense meaning "bad," "wicked," or morally wrong. That use is now uncommon, but it matters when reading older texts and it helps explain the history of the word "naughty." So, while "zero" is the plain modern choice, "naught" reaches further: it can name the number 0, the idea of nothing, a failed result in phrases like "come to naught," and, in older English, a bad or wicked person or thing.