Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"worthless," 1845, American English, literally "of no account" (see account (n.)). The phrase of non acompte "of no value or importance" is from late 14c. Contracted form no'count is attested from 1853.
Wiktionary
a. (context US colloquial English) Of no value or merit; good-for-nothing; of no account. alt. (context US colloquial English) Of no value or merit; good-for-nothing; of no account.
WordNet
adj. without merit; "a sorry horse"; "a sorry excuse"; "a lazy no-count, good-for-nothing goldbrick"; "the car was a no-good piece of junk" [syn: good-for-nothing, good-for-naught, meritless, no-count, no-good, sorry]
Usage examples of "no-account".
At each stop, No-Account had heard her female companions discuss their hopes and fears, so she watched with interest as Cornelia Roundtree, then Florine Berefort stepped out onto the dusty ground in their traveling dresses.
And Hughie, no-account, taken-in-out-of-kindness Hughie, who had lived for years on the fringe of the raucous, brawling Masseys, watched and waited as the tension mounted.
And she was dead right about that being unlikely for any deal made in a no-account District Six saloon.
It made me mad to see so much sparkle in her eyes over such a no-account rascaL Me, I didn't buy that flannel-mouth talk, and he knew it.
It's an expense-account, no-account gin palace and gaming den, very expensive, full of yanks and maple-leafers, touts, tarts, hustlers, dirty weekenders.
The ones who remained were hired gun hands or no-account drifters.
I always called that place Trout Key, cause of all the sea trout on the grass banks off the shore, but the crackers called it Mormon Key, on account of that no-account old Richard Hamilton had other children by a common-law wife who was still living up around Arcadia.