iota

noun io·ta \ ī-ˈō-tə \

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

See iota defined for English-language learners

See iota defined for kids

iota was our Word of the Day on 09/25/2016. Hear the podcast!

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

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
The most commonly stated argument in favor of physically disrupting white-supremacist rallies is that society can’t give an iota of legitimacy to these groups.

— jesse singal, Daily Intelligencer, "The Careful, Pragmatic Case Against Punching Nazis," 19 Aug. 2017
Along with their Democrat colleagues, nearly every Republican official who maintains any iota of respectability (and even some who lost any respectability long ago) have denounced Trump’s rhetoric.

— hillary kelly, Glamour, "It's Time to Impeach Donald Trump," 16 Aug. 2017
As a parent, Matt Dunn of Overland Park doesn’t care one iota that his two kids are supposed to be in school on Aug. 21 — the first time in more than 200 years that the path of a total solar eclipse has crossed Kansas City.

— eric adler, mark davis and diane stafford, kansascity, "‘Call it a snow day’: Schools, businesses shut for Royals parade, why not for eclipse?," 13 Aug. 2017
And Rose clearly fed off the crowd’s slack-jawed astonishment at his vocal prowess and the band’s tightly executed renditions of rock songs that haven’t dated one iota over the last 25-30 years.

— joe lynch, Billboard, "Guns N' Roses Rip It Up at the Apollo Theater As 'Appetite for Destruction' Turns 30," 21 July 2017
Trump has not moderated his behavior one iota since becoming president.

— ben shapiro, National Review, "More and More Trump Supporters Celebrate His Character Flaws," 19 July 2017
The Trump apprenticeship initiative will not move the top-line labor market measures one iota -- 1 million apprenticeships pales in comparison with the 159 million in the civilian labor force.

— doug holtz-eakin, CNN, "Trump's trillion-dollar infrastructure plan -- jobs boost or giveaway?," 13 June 2017
Uniloc seems to have searched for every iota of Google's business activity in a large state and thrown it into its lawsuit.

— joe mullin, Ars Technica, "How one patent troll is desperately trying to stay in East Texas," 6 June 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.