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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

bout.

A period of something, especially one painful or unpleasant, like an illness.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈbaʊt//bʌʊt/Canada
  1. A period of something, especially one painful or unpleasant, like an illness.

    a bout of drought
    a coughing bout
  2. A boxing match.

  3. An assault (a fencing encounter) at which the score is kept.

  4. A roller derby match.

  5. A fighting competition.

  6. A bulge or widening in a musical instrument, such as either of the two characteristic bulges of a guitar.

  7. The going and returning of a plough, or other implement used to mark the ground and create a headland, across a field.

    dated
Where this word comes from

From Middle English bout, bowt, bught (whence also modern English bought (“bend, curve”)), probably from Old English *buht (“bend, turn”), an unrecorded variant of Old English byht (“a bend, curve”), from Proto-West Germanic *buhti, from Proto-Germanic *buhtiz (“a bend”). Equivalent to bow + -t. Doublet of bight and bought. Compare Dutch bocht and German Bucht. For the sense development compare bender.

verb/ˈbaʊt//bʌʊt/Canada
  1. To contest a bout.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English bout, bowt, bught (whence also modern English bought (“bend, curve”)), probably from Old English *buht (“bend, turn”), an unrecorded variant of Old English byht (“a bend, curve”), from Proto-West Germanic *buhti, from Proto-Germanic *buhtiz (“a bend”). Equivalent to bow + -t. Doublet of bight and bought. Compare Dutch bocht and German Bucht. For the sense development compare bender.

prep/ˈbaʊt//bʌʊt/Canada
  1. Apheretic form of about.

    colloquial
    They're talking bout you!
    Maddy is bout to get beat up!
Where this word comes from

Written form of a reduction of about.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.