neat 1  (n ēt)
Share:
adj. neat·er, neat·est 1. a. Orderly and clean; tidy: a neat office; a neat desk. b. Habitually tidy or well-organized: was lucky to have a neat roommate. 2. Marked by ingenuity and skill; adroit: a neat turn of phrase. 3. Not diluted or mixed with other substances: neat whiskey. 4. Left after all deductions; net: neat profit. 5. Slang Wonderful; terrific: That was a neat party.
[Anglo-Norman neit, clear, pure, variant of Old French net, from Latin nitidus, elegant, gleaming, from nitēre, to shine.]
neatly adv. neatness n. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
neat 2  (n ēt)
Share:
n. pl. neat Archaic A cow or other domestic bovine animal.
[Middle English net, from Old English nēat.] |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices
Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:
Indo-European Roots
Semitic Roots
The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.
This website is best viewed in Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, or Safari. Some characters in pronunciations and etymologies cannot be displayed properly in Internet Explorer.