Etymology

mought

M3O1U1G2H4T1
Middle English moghte ← Old English muhte
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Old English · inherited frommuhte
  2. Middle English · inherited frommoghte
  3. English todaymought

Inherited from Middle English moghte, from Old English muhte, late variant of meahte, mihte (“might”) due to the influence of the infinitive *mugan, itself an analogical remodelling of magan (“to be capable, to be able to”) after dugan (“to be useful”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.