naughty
/ˈnɔːti
/- Sometimes it's like being a school teacher with a multitude of naughty children to look after.
- I wasn't a very naughty child generally, so this was quite out of character.
- If your child is naughty, maybe it is the parents that are at fault.
- It was used to greatest effect when it makes the actors say rude or naughty things.
- Explicit language makes a lot of us squirm because it's chock full of taboos: It's crude, it's naughty, it's raunchy, its real.
- The lyrics to this very hummable song are extremely naughty, not smutty or crude, just enjoyably naughty.
Synonyms
Synonyms
Phrases
the naughty step
Derivatives
naughtily
/ adverb ...- Drinking coffee at night still seems naughtily bohemian in this city, and there's an undercurrent of guilty complicity in the air.
- ‘You're right,’ Aidan agreed and smiled rather naughtily.
- Lynn winks naughtily at him, and Clark's smile broadens.
naughtiness
/ noun ...- She has the knack of bringing out the naughtiness in people…
- There's an awful lot of rude words in it, a lot of swearing, a lot of naughtiness.
- He had a very highly developed sense of humour and naughtiness.
Origin
Late Middle English: from naught + -y1. The earliest recorded sense was 'possessing nothing'; the sense 'wicked' also dates from late Middle English, and gave rise to the current senses.
Today naughty generally refers to children or animals that misbehave in a fairly harmless way, but until quite recently it was a stronger word meaning ‘wicked’ or ‘morally bad’, as in ‘An Oxe of mine being a naughty beast, through ye default of mine owne fence hath goared a Cow of your Worships’ (1592) or ‘'Tis a villanous Error of some naughty Men’ (1699). Naughty comes from the Old English word naught, ‘nothing’, and originally meant ‘possessing nothing, poor, needy’. The sense ‘mildly rude or indecent’, found in expressions such as ‘naughty bits’, dates from the mid 16th century.