Wot

Pronunciation

• AusE enPR: wŏt, IPA: /wÉ”t/
• UK enPR: wŏt, IPA: /wÉ’t/
• US enPR: wät, IPA: /wÉ‘t/
• Rhymes: -É’t
• Homophones: watt, what in accents with the wine-whine merger

An extension of the present-tense form of wit (verb) to apply to all forms.

Full definition of wot

Verb

1. (archaic) To know.
• 1526, William Tyndale, trans. Bible, John XII:He that walketh in the darke, wotteth not whither he goeth.
• 1855, John Godfrey Saxe, Poems, Ticknor & Fields 1855, p. 121:She little wots, poor Lady Anne! Her wedded lord is dead.
• 1866, Algernon Charles Swinburne, "The Garden of Proserpine" in Poems and Ballads, 1st Series, London: J. C. Hotten, 1866:They wot not who make thither ....
• 1889, William Morris, The Roots of the Mountains, Inkling Books 2003, p. 241:Then he cast his eyes on the road that entered the Market-stead from the north, and he saw thereon many men gathered; and he wotted not what they were ....

From wit, in return from Old English verb witan.

Verb

1. Conjugation of wit

2. wot

   (third-person singular of wit)

Representing pronunciation.

Interjection

1. what (humorous misspelling intended to mimic certain working class accents)
• 1859, Then, wot with undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sextons, and wot with private watchmen (all awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn't get much by it, even if it was so. — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (Penguin 2003, p. 319)
2. Wot, no bananas? (popular slogan during wartime rationing)

Anagrams

• OTW, owt, tow, two, Two, WTO