iota

noun io·ta \ ī-ˈō-tə , in sense 1 sometimes ē-ˈō-tə \

|Updated on: 12 Jun 2018

Examples: iota in a Sentence

Editor's Note: iota and Jot

Definition of iota

1 : the 9th letter of the Greek alphabet — see Alphabet Table

2 : an infinitesimal amount : jot

did not show an iota of interest

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See iota defined for kids

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Examples of iota in a Sentence

there's not an iota of doubt regarding the defendant's guilt

Recent Examples of iota from the Web

Once installed, a child seat impinges on only the last iota of front-seat travel for taller drivers.

— alexander stoklosa, Car and Driver, "2018 Honda Fit," 19 Jan. 2018
That kind of underlying approach to our gender doesn’t seem to me to have changed an iota.

— laura regensdorf, Vogue, "Glenda Jackson, 82, on Sexism, Earning Your Wrinkles, and Cynthia Nixon's Run for Governor," 9 May 2018
Each iota of desire comes with the consequence of pain, and being a woman had me like a Hungry Ghost.

— aaron gilbreath, Longreads, "Pretty Girls Turned Hungry Ghosts," 27 Feb. 2018
This is also her first solo show in Los Angeles, and there’s not one iota of stage fright here.

— Vogue, "In L.A., Rachel Feinstein Finds Inspiration in the Victoria's Secret Runway Show," 13 Jan. 2018
Do Not: Watch any movie that has an iota of romance.

— ellie delano, Woman's Day, "How To Get Yourself Through Another Lonely Weekend," 15 Apr. 2013
Human nature hasn’t changed one iota over the millennia.

— WSJ, "Progressive States Pay More Than They Get," 14 Aug. 2017
The maligned front five of Cincinnati allowed Andy Dalton to take brutal hits, be sacked three more times and fail to muster an iota of push in the run game.

— paul dehner jr., Cincinnati.com, "Question mark grows on Bengals offensive line," 30 Oct. 2017
Since the election, every iota of news has somehow come to seem more urgent, with each newsbreak, tweet, press conference, and cable news countdown clock hurtling toward …

— WIRED, "The Great Tech Panic: Breaking News Addiction," 25 Aug. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'iota.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

iota and Jot

The words iota and jot share a lot more than just a common meaning—both ultimately derive from the same word. When Latin scholars transcribed the Greek name of the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet, they spelled it as either iota or jota (the letters i and j were simply variants of each other), and these spellings eventually passed into English as iota and jot. Since the Greek letter iota is the smallest letter of its alphabet, both words eventually came to be used in reference to very small things.