aught

1 of 3

pronoun

ˈȯt

ˈät

Synonyms of aught

: anything

: all, everything

for aught I care

for aught we know

aught

2 of 3

noun

: zero, cipher

archaic : nonentity, nothing

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

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 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.

Examples of aught in a Sentence

Noun 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 on the Web

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Noun

Everyone can show up in their favorite aughts attire. —Maggie Griswold, StyleCaster, 1 Apr. 2025 The estate started a new chapter in the early aughts when Elisabetta Foradori, Thomas Widmann, and Giovanni Podini acquired the property and renamed it Ampelaia. —Lauren Mowery, Forbes.com, 31 Mar. 2025 Juicy Tubes, a category-defining lip gloss that ruled the aughts and, after being discontinued in 2018, relaunched with much fanfare in 2020. —Claire Sullivan, Footwear News, 28 Mar. 2025 In fact, the aughts marked the peak of what many describe as the golden age of television. —Glamour, 26 Mar. 2025 See All Example Sentences for aught