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From the M-W Editors
aught was our Word of the Day on 08/08/2012. Hear the podcast!
Theme music by Joshua Stamper ©2006 New Jerusalem Music/ASCAP
Did You Know?
If you know aught which does behove my knowledge / Thereof to be inform'd, imprison't not / In ignorant concealment, Polixenes begs Camillo in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, employing the "anything" sense of "aught." Shakespeare didn't coin the pronoun "aught," which has been a part of the English language since before the 12th century, but he did put it to frequent use. Writers today may be less likely to use "aught" than were their literary predecessors, but the pronoun does continue to turn up occasionally. "Aught" can also be a noun meaning "zero," and for a while the phrase "the aughts" was bandied about as a proposed label for the decade that began in the year 2000.
Origin and Etymology of aught
see 1aught
Examples of aught in a Sentence
for dates, the year is automatically listed as a pair of aughts, so the user has to scroll down to the correct figure
Recent Examples of aught from the Web
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Inspired by a rugby shirt a designer found at a vintage shop and recreated for sale back in the aughts, the capsule collection is full of fun, tropical brights made for warm-weather fun.
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For a moment in the mid-aughts as major labels came through town to kick the scene’s tires, Bump was primed to be the next breakthrough, riding a series of hot mixtapes to a deal with Atlantic.
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Twenty-three such boxes were filled when LACMA, the tar pits’ neighbor, built a subterranean parking lot in the aughts.
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Gentrification in the nation’s capital, largely a downtown phenomenon in the early aughts, has spread in all directions, including toward Howard Manor, at Georgia Avenue and Girard Street NW, on the northern edge of Howard’s campus.
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The biggest gay-rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, for example, remained hostile to pushing for marriage all the way through to the mid-aughts.
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Many experts believe the Equation Group successfully attacked Iran’s nuclear program in the mid-aughts.
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Difficult-to-place samples echo back to late aughts post-dubstep sonic cues.
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Louis C.K. transformed his stand-up persona in the late-aughts by pivoting from absurdist observations to fatherhood stresses.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'aught'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Origin and Etymology of aught
alteration (resulting from false division of a naught) of naught
Other Mathematics and Statistics Terms
AUGHT Defined for Kids
Learn More about aught
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See words that rhyme with aught Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for aught Nglish: Translation of aught for Spanish speakers Britannica English: Translation of aught for Arabic speakers
Seen and Heard
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