aught

pronoun \ ˈȯt , ˈät \

|Updated on: 16 Jun 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

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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

James Hogan was laid to rest back in ’07 — the aughts of 100 years ago — without fanfare, although he was accompanied by flowers.

— katherine jones, idahostatesman, "'Jimmy the Stiff,' Boise's infamous town drunk, gets a proper toast a century later," 1 June 2018
Ken Oletta, who is a wonderful New Yorker writer, had attempted to break this story for the New Yorker several times, as early as the early aughts, 2001, 2002.

— recode staff, Recode, "Full transcript: Journalist Ronan Farrow on Recode Decode," 4 May 2018
Bee rolled a clip from the early ‘aughts that may have foreshadowed Conway’s tactics during the 2016 campaign.

— anna millard, refinery29.com, "Sam Bee Dug Up Kellyanne Conway’s Daily Show Appearances — & They Explain So Much," 26 May 2018
Twitter user @Jamie_Maz—for the second time—surfaced a number of homophobic posts, from the early aughts, on Reid's now defunct blog, the Reid Report.

— louise matsakis, WIRED, "A Short History of Blaming 'Hackers' For Pretty Much Everything," 27 Apr. 2018
Unless the partners can pick up the pace in response to tectonic regional and global power shifts, the grand partnership imagined in the early aughts will fall short.

— atman trivedi, The New Republic, "The U.S.-India Relationship Needs Work," 15 May 2018
Dawson’s Creek was the teen drama to watch in the ’90s and early aughts.

— michele corriston, PEOPLE.com, "James Van Der Beek Loves That His Dawson's Creek Ugly Cry Face Became an Internet Meme," 30 Mar. 2018
Alabama's defensive front looks fierce Alabama's first-team defensive front either looked like the '85 Bears or the Tide's starting offensive line resembled the Houston Texans' blocking unit of the early aughts.

— michael casagrande, AL.com, "Live updates from Nick Saban after A-Day Game," 21 Apr. 2018
But perhaps nothing explains his worldview quite so clearly as his attitude toward a high-profile but not consequential case that he was involved with: the prosecution of Martha Stewart in the early aughts.

— matthew yglesias, Vox, "James Comey isn’t the hero we deserve. But he’s the hero we need," 18 Apr. 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.