Nowt and Owt
""Nowt" means nothing and "owt" means anything, as in 'there's nowt so queer as folk' or 'have you got owt for us?'"
Two of the most instantly recognisable words in Northern English dialect, especially across Yorkshire, both direct descendants of Old English. "Nowt" comes from "nāwiht," a compound of "nā" (not) and "wiht" (thing, or "wight"), while "owt" comes from the related Old English "āwiht" (anything, literally "ever a thing"). Both words simply wore down through centuries of everyday speech into their clipped modern forms, surviving in the North long after the rest of England smoothed them into "nothing" and "anything."
Sources: Old English 'nāwiht' and 'āwiht' documented in historical dialect scholarship and the Middle English Dictionary.
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