Knot

How to spell knot

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce knot

What does knot mean?

1. nounA fastening made by tying or interlacing rope, string, or thread.
2. nounA unit of speed used at sea and in aviation, equal to one nautical mile per hour.

Knot in a sentence

• The rope had a tight knot.

• The ferry cruised at roughly one knot slower than usual in the fog.

• Sailors learn many kinds of knot.

• A steady headwind cut the yacht's speed by nearly a knot.

Where does knot come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English cnotta, which described a fastening made by tying or interlacing material, as well as a hard lump. It belongs to a wider Germanic family that includes the Dutch knot and the German Knoten, all sharing the idea of something bound or bunched together. The silent k at the front is a fossil from a time when English speakers genuinely pronounced both the k and the n, much as they still do in the related words knee and knife. By the seventeenth century the word had also picked up its nautical sense, because sailors measured a ship's speed using a line knotted at fixed intervals; counting how many knots ran out over a set time gave the speed, and the name stuck. That dropped k-sound is exactly the trap, since the word sounds identical to 'not' but is spelled with an opening k and a t at the end.

How the word is built

• knot (single root, from Old English cnotta: a fastening or lump)

Words that sound like knot

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• not: A word used to express negation, denial, refusal, or the absence of something.