WORTH • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Worth

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/wərθ/ Listen

noun

Worth n.

1.

That quality of a thing which renders it valuable or useful; sum of valuable qualities which render anything useful and sought; value; hence, often, value as expressed in a standard, as money; equivalent in exchange; price. "What 's worth in anything But so much money as 't will bring?"

2.

Value in respect of moral or personal qualities; excellence; virtue; eminence; desert; merit; usefulness; as, a man or magistrate of great worth. "To be of worth, and worthy estimation." "As none but she, who in that court did dwell, Could know such worth, or worth describe so well." "To think how modest worth neglected lies."

Synonyms: Desert; merit; excellence; price; rate.

verb

Worth v. i. To be; to become; to betide; now used only in the phrases, woe worth the day, woe worth the man, etc., in which the verb is in the imperative, and the nouns day, man, etc., are in the dative. Woe be to the day, woe be to the man, etc., are equivalent phrases. "I counsel... to let the cat worthe." "He worth upon (got upon) his steed gray."

adjective

Worth adj.

1.

Valuable; of worthy; estimable; also, worth while. (Obs.) "It was not worth to make it wise."

2.

Equal in value to; furnishing an equivalent for; proper to be exchanged for. "A ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats." "All our doings without charity are nothing worth." "If your arguments produce no conviction, they are worth nothing to me."

3.

Deserving of; in a good or bad sense, but chiefly in a good sense. "To reign is worth ambition, though in hell." "This is life indeed, life worth preserving."

4.

Having possessions equal to; having wealth or estate to the value of. "At Geneva are merchants reckoned worth twenty hundred crowns."

Worth while, or Worth the while. See under While, n.

See images of 'Worth'

Etymology of 'Worth'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Worth" Quotes from Famous Books

... with all the feeling of a mother, the circumstances of its death. But her story availed her nothing against the savage brutality of her master. She was severely whipped. A healthy child four months old was then considered worth $100 in North Carolina. ...

— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... that brought forward by tile geographers, Duval and Nolin, and the navigator, Bouvet, who place those lands almost immediately to the south of the Cape of Good Hope. As there are no lands thereabout, this opinion is hardly worth quoting but, considering the very limited knowledge of the geography of that part of the world in those days, the error may be readily understood. Others, basing their opinion on the length of De Gonneville's voyage, have surmised that he might have landed on some part of the coast of Tasmania ...

— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... literary expression was necessarily limited in the case of a practising cook who, after all, must have been the collector of the Apician formulae. This is sufficiently proven by the lingua coquinaria, the vulgar Latin of our old work. In our opinion, the ancient author did not consider it worth his while to give anything but the most indispensable information in the tersest form. This he certainly did. A comparison of his literary performance with that of the artistic and accomplished writer of the Renaissance, Platina, will at once show up Apicius as a hard-working practical ...

— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... used with two quite different meanings. Psychologically, interest is evidently a feeling state, that is, it represents a phase of consciousness. My interest in football, for instance, represents the feeling of worth which accompanies attention to such experiences. In this sense interest and attention are but two sides of the single experience, interest representing the feeling, and attention the effort side of the experience. As thus applied, the term interest is said to be used subjectively. More, often, ...

— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... virtues; and the more tender sentiments are excited and unfolded in it. Many touches, in particular, will impress themselves, which give the young reader an insight into the more hidden corner of the human heart and its passions,—a knowledge which is more worth than all Latin and Greek, and of which Ovid was a very excellent master. But yet it is not on this account that the classic poets, and therefore Ovid, are placed in the hands of youth. We have ...

— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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