aught

pronoun \ ˈȯt , ˈät \

|Updated on: 11 Aug 2018

Examples: aught in a Sentence

Editor's Note: Did You Know?

Definition of aught

1 : anything

2 : all, everything

for aught I care

for aught we know

See aught defined for English-language learners

See aught defined for kids

aught was our Word of the Day on 08/08/2012. Hear the podcast!

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

Middle English, from Old English āwiht, from ā ever + wiht creature, thing — more at aye, wight

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: before 12th century

in the meaning defined at sense 1

See Words from the same year

aught

adverb

Definition of aught

archaic

: at all

Origin and Etymology of aught

see ¹aught

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: before 12th century

in the meaning defined above

See Words from the same year

aught

noun

Definition of aught

1 : zero, cipher

2 archaic : nonentity, nothing

3 aughts plural : the ten year period from 2000 through 2009

By the middle of the aughts, … the percentage of 26-year-olds living with their parents reached 20 percent, nearly double what it was in 1970.
—Don Peck

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

People of a certain age might remember a distinctly late-nineties and early-aughts culinary fad: the fancy mac and cheese.

— ben huberman, Longreads, "Cheese and Macaroni Do Not a Mac and Cheese Make," 5 June 2018
Such was the case with the two-toned Herve Chapelier nylon totes of the late nineties and early aughts; now, in the age of Instagram, it’s Cult Gaia’s Ark bag.

— alexandra ilyashov, Glamour, "The Full Story Behind Fashion's Favorite—and Most Affordable—'It Bag'," 16 May 2018
For her 80th birthday, Fonda had a big bash to raise money for Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential—something she’s done for all of her big aughts birthdays.

— hilary weaver, Vanities, "Jane Fonda Has “Closed Up Shop Down There”," 9 May 2018
Fronting that step forward is Evangeline Lilly, who many know as the tough airplane-crash survivor Kate on ABC's aughts cult TV hit Lost.

— katie kilkenny, The Hollywood Reporter, "Evangeline Lilly on How She "Challenged" Herself to Speak Up on the 'Ant-Man and The Wasp' Set," 5 July 2018
Data-cruncher ArcSight dominated security operations centers—the digital war rooms of corporations—through the aughts.

— robert hackett, Fortune, "Upstart Data Wrangler Raises $25 Million to Take on IBM, HPE, and Splunk," 28 June 2018
Sugarland, the Americana duo of Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush, were reliable Nashville hitmakers throughout the aughts, racking up tens of millions of records sold, seven number-one hits on the country charts, and two Grammy awards.

— brittany martin, Los Angeles Magazine, "The Best Things to Do This Week in L.A.," 11 June 2018
Indulge that nostalgia by watching this now nearly ten-year-old movie, about a pair of hip kids in mid- to late-aughts New York City chasing their favorite band—and their crushes on one another—around town on one crazy night.

— richard lawson, HWD, "What’s New on Netflix in June," 24 May 2018
In an interview filmed in the aughts, Ramm sheds light on his everyday life.

— hua hsu, The New Yorker, "The Spectacular Personal Mythology of Rammellzee," 21 May 2018

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.