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naughty

adjectivecommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈnɔːti//
  • United Kingdom//ˈnoːtɪj//
  • //ˈnɔti//
  • /[ˈnɔɾi]/
  • //ˈnɑti//

Mischievous; tending to misbehave or act badly (especially of a child).

adjective

  1. 1

    Mischievous; tending to misbehave or act badly (especially of a child).

    Some naughty boys at school hid the teacher's lesson notes.

  2. 2

    Sexually provocative; now in weakened sense, risqué, cheeky.

    I bought some naughty lingerie for my honeymoon.

    If I see you send another naughty email to your friends, you will be forbidden from using the computer!

  3. 3

    informalDecadent, had as indulgence, especially an unhealthy one.

    You knew I had to include at least one naughty chocolate smoothie, didn't you?!

  4. 4

    archaicEvil, wicked, morally reprehensible.

    my proneſſe to ſinne, and naughty appetites and desires, woulde drawe me headlong to the pitte of hell

    […]How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

    A wicked doer giveth heed to false lips; and a liar giveth ear to a naughty tongue.

    Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomack differ little or nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of evill.

  5. 5

    obsoleteBad, worthless, substandard.

    In Cornwall is two speches, the one is naughty Englysshe, and the other is Cornysshe speche.

    One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe: and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad.

Etymology

From late Middle English noughti, naughty (“evil, immoral, wicked”), from nought (“evil, immoral”) + -ī̆ (suffix forming adjectives). Analysable as naught + -y.

Forms

comparative
naughtier
superlative
naughtiest
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).