Etymologically
Log in Sign up
English

naughty

History

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈnɔːti/ (Received Pronunciation)[1]

Etymology

From Middle English noughti,[2][3] from nought “nothing; evil” + -y,[4][2] from Old English nāwiht (“nothing”),[2][4] a compound of nā “no” + wiht “thing, being”.[2] See naught.[4][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

“Needy, having nothing” (late 14th century; the OED's first quotation is from 1377),[4][5] and also “evil, immoral, corrupt”.[4][2]

Semantic evolution

In the 16th century naughty was an all-purpose word for “bad”: it could describe bad weather, vicious animals, and food or goods of poor quality.[2][5] All these senses have disappeared.[2] The milder sense “disobedient, mischievous”, especially of children, is recorded from the 1630s,[4][5] and a sexual sense from 1869.[4][5] As the American Heritage Dictionary puts it, naughty has in a sense risen from nothing.[2]

Timeline

  • 1377 – “having nothing; poor, needy”.[5]
  • 1526 – “bad, inferior in quality”, common c. 1540–1650.[5]
  • 1529 – of persons, “morally bad, wicked”.[5]
  • 1541 – of weather, “bad, nasty”.[5]
  • 1630s – of children, “disobedient, mischievous”.[4][5]
  • 1869 – sexual sense, in the slang phrase to do the naughty.[4][5]

Modern meaning

Adjective

  1. Badly behaved or mischievous, especially of children.[2][3][6][1]
  2. Mildly indecent or improper; risqué.[2][6][1]
  3. (archaic) Wicked, immoral.[3][6][1]

Word family

  • naughtily, naughtiness
  • naughty step, naughty word

Related words

  • naught, nought

References

  1. [1] [2] [3] [4] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  3. [1] [2] [3] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. [1] [2] [3] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House

Last edited on 5 October 2026.