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"If you know aught which does behove my knowledge / Thereof to be inform'd, imprison't not / In ignorant concealment," Polixenes begs Camillo in William 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 "the aughts" is heard occasionally for the decade at the beginning of a century (say, 1900-1909 or 2000-2009) in which the penultimate digit is a zero.
Synonyms
Examples of aught in a Sentence
Shannon Carlin, TIME, 19 Apr. 2024
The two veteran rappers took us back to the aughts, when songs weren’t simply uploaded to streaming platforms at midnight.
—Andre Gee, Rolling Stone, 15 Apr. 2024
As much as Golden State’s annual meetings with LeBron James and the Cavs were the defining matchups of the aughts, the real NBA Finals were often played between the Warriors and Rockets.
—Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News, 4 Apr. 2024
In the early aughts, Frank Warren ran a medical document delivery business in Germantown, Maryland.
—Hazlitt, 3 Apr. 2024
The late '90s and early aughts were the last peak for movie stars.
—Amanda Luberto, The Arizona Republic, 12 Apr. 2024
And who could forget the ubiquitous flower crown atop brides in the early aughts?
—Shelby Wax, Vogue, 12 Apr. 2024
Director Ryuhei Kitamura invites nearly every character, trope, theme, and, most importantly, monster from Godzilla’s first half-century into this feverish explosion of early aughts action.
—Katie Rife, EW.com, 28 Mar. 2024
Well into the aughts, much of the coverage of Black American tech usage had a tone of incredulity or outright condescension.
—Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, 12 Apr. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'aught.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Aught.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aught. Accessed 27 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
aught
1 of 2 pronoun
aught
2 of 2 nounPronoun
Old English āwiht "anything," from ā "ever, always" and wiht "creature, thing"
Noun
from naught "zero," from mistaking a naught for an aught
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