no-count

no-count pronunciation

/NO-count/

Meaning

Call a person no-count and you are saying they will not pull their weight. Call a tool or a patch of land no-count and you mean it is trash for the job. The word sits between sorry and good-for-nothing: blunt judgment without a long speech. Around working Southern folks it lands hard because count used to mean value on the books.

How folks use it

• “I ain't hiring that no-count cousin of yours again.”
• “This no-count battery died before we got out of the driveway.”

Origin and etymology

Short for no-account, American English from the mid-1800s meaning of no value. Of no account is older still. The clipped no'count / no-count stuck hard in Southern and South Midland speech, where DARE still marks it as chiefly regional.

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