Nott

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Having been cropped short or shorn, particularly describing hair cut close to the head or an animal without horns
2. Describing something clipped or cut close, such as hair trimmed very short or cattle and sheep lacking horns
3. Archaic term for hair cropped close to the scalp or for an animal that has been left without horns

Etymology: "Nott" is an old English word meaning "close-cropped" or "shorn," and it survives today mainly in the phrase "nott-headed" or as a term for a hornless animal. In Old English, the word was "hnot," which described something with its head or top cut off or without horns, and it was used of sheep, cattle, and people whose hair had been clipped short. The origin of "hnot" is unknown, so its ancestry beyond Old English cannot be traced with confidence. The word has a sound-alike cousin in "knot," the tied loop, but the two are not connected in their roots. The surviving sense has narrowed over the centuries, so that "nott" now generally refers to a polled, or hornless, animal rather than a general sense of shearing or cropping.