Owt

Part of speech: pronoun

Definitions

1. In some northern English dialects, a word meaning anything at all, used in place of the standard word anything
2. A dialect term, chiefly northern English, for any thing whatsoever, especially in negative or questioning phrases
3. Northern English dialect word meaning anything or whatever, the regional counterpart of the standard English word anything

Etymology: "Owt" is a dialect and informal form of "aught," which goes back to Old English "āuht," meaning "anything." The Old English word was built from "ā," meaning "ever," and "wiht," meaning "creature" or "thing," so its original sense was roughly "ever a thing" or "any whatsoever." Over the centuries the word has shifted from a fairly formal term to one that now belongs mostly to northern English speech and to conversational phrases such as "for owt I know." Because "owt" is a clipped, spoken-form variant of "aught," its history is essentially the history of that older word. The initial "a" was worn away in everyday speech, leaving a short form that kept the core meaning of "anything at all" while sounding quite different from its ancestor.