I am afraid that BBC TV has put me into a bit of a muddle. Programs set in modern times seem to use "nowt" most often to mean "nothing," whereas programs set in Victorian and earlier periods say "naught" (pronounced like "not"). In periods between, usage of the word seems less frequent.
Perhaps nowt is simply slang or perhaps a recognized dialect?
nowt is Northern English (especially Yorkshire) for nothing.
There was a popular ad for a brand of bread
"Bread wi' Nowt Taken Out"
As in the informal saying (BE), There's nowt so queer as folk.
Cambridge Dictionary: Said to emphasize that people sometimes behave in a very strange way.
This is a saying that the British use (identified with language usage in the north of England) which might be considered by some to be a little archaic nowadays. It tends to crop up in period pieces on TV and in old British films (movies). It should be noted that the word queer in the context of the saying (as above) does not conflate its pejorative use in reference to homosexuality in general or gay people in particular.
It’s from one of the Northern dialects of Britain. The nowt spelling appears to be from the North of England or further. According to Wiktionary, it means nothing other than naught or nought, however you care to spell it. It’s pronounced /naʊt/ or /nɒʊt/, and has been around since Middle English.
nowt (uncountable)
(Northern England, Sussex) Naught, nothing.
They reference it in a Geordie proverb, shy bairns get nowt.
'Nowt' is pretty widespread. It's certainly part of Lincolnshire dialect (see under N of course), which takes it as far south as The Wash. It's also Derbyshire and Leicestershire The answer by @tchrist mentions it in Sussex apparently as an outlier. Can anyone get it further south than Leicestershire?
