I Swear English › Vocabulary A–Z › Naughty
What does ‘Naughty’ mean?
Related forms: polite, used especially for children
Naughty is an adjective used to describe bad behaviour or unacceptable actions. Naughty is a mild adjective and is good to use in polite company. It is not a strong criticism. Naughtiness is a noun meaning bad behaviour.
“You are a naughty boy”.
“I know it's naughty of me, but I'm going to have another cream cake”.
“Your naughtiness has disappointed me”.
Naughty is used to mean indecent, of a sexual nature or rude.
“In a newsagent the naughty magazines are usually on the top shelf”.
“I'm going to tell a naughty joke, so don't be offended”.
“Shall we go to the bedroom and be naughty?”.
Watch: ‘Naughty’ explained
Video transcript
N is for Naughty. This describes bad behaviour. It is an adjective. But this is not strong. A child is naughty, it does... a child does something it should not do. Notice there is a big difference between naughty and bad. Naughty is not strong, whereas bad is talking about something evil. Children are not bad, children are naughty. They behave in a bad way. So naughty, to transgress the rules, but slightly, just a little bit, not badly. So naughty, "That was very naughty of you". You shouldn't have done it. A criticism, but not that strong. OK. "That was bad of you." That's much stronger. So naughty, there you go. Notice the pronunciation has very little relationship to the spelling. Yes? N-A-U-G-H-T-Y. Naughty. So thanks for watching and I will see you in another video. Bye for now.
More from the Vocabulary A–Z
Keep building your word power — every word comes with examples and a short video: