In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result. If the bumf arrived electronically, the take-up rate was 0.1%. And for online adverts the “conversion” into sales was a minuscule 0.01%. 2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8837, page 74:
She bought an expensive bag last week.
bought en · NOUN · etymology 2
Pronunciation
/ˈbɒt/ (cot-caught-merger)
/ˈbɑt/ (cot-caught-merger)
/ˈbɔːt/ (Received-Pronunciation)
/ˈbɔt/ (General-American) without the cot–caught merger
From Middle English bought, bowght, bouȝt, *buȝt, probably an alteration of bight, biȝt, byȝt (“bend, bight”) after bowen, buwen, buȝen (“to bow, bend”). Cognate with Scots boucht, bucht, bout (“bend”). More at bight and bout.
Meanings
(obsolete) A bend; flexure; curve; a hollow angle.
(obsolete) A bend or hollow in a human or animal body.
(obsolete) A curve or bend in a river, mountain chain, or other geographical feature.
the river it selfe turneth North east and is stil a navigable streame. On the westerne side of this bought is Tauxenent with 40 men. 1612, John Smith, Map of Virginia, Kupperman, published 1988, page 159:
(obsolete) The part of a sling that contains the stone.
(obsolete) A fold, bend, or coil in a tail, snake's body etc.
Her huge long taile her den all ouerſpred, / Yet was in knots and many boughtes vpwound, / Pointed with mortall ſting. 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 7: