AUGHT
Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 12:02 am
• aught •
Pronunciation: awt or ôt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, mass & Adverb
Meaning: 1. [Noun] Anything, all, everything 2. [Noun] Nothing, zero 3. [Adverb] At all.
Notes: English has a peculiar way of expressing years, e.g. 1923 = nineteen (hundred) twenty-three. All other non-Germanic Indo-European languages use thousand, i.e. one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three. This presents English with a problem for the first decade of a millennium, since "twenty hundred" is unacceptable and to refer to a year as simply "one", "two", or "three" would be incomprehensible. The solution has always been to use the term aught, e.g. we are now living in "aught five" ('05). This word has a negative variant, naught, which is the actual source of this sense of today's word (see Word History).
In Play: Be careful not to confuse this Good Word with the auxiliary verb, ought: "I ought to have naught to say to him since his release back in aught one ('01)." In a more positive vein, we may also say, "Has she aught to offer a poor lonely fellow like me?" when me mean "anything".
Word History: Today's is as authentic an English word as ever there was. It comes from Old English á "ever" + with (wight) "creature, thing," literally "ever a thing", pretty close to "everything". The word's meaning migrated to its antonym (from "all" to "nothing") via reanalysis, when some people mistook "a naught" for "an aught", drawing the line between the two words where it shouldn't be. Which leaves us with naughty. Its original meaning was "having naught, poor", back when poor folk were assumed to be bad. (We have naught but gratitude for Leonard Pelletier for aught he lent us in suggesting this Good Word.)
Pronunciation: awt or ôt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, mass & Adverb
Meaning: 1. [Noun] Anything, all, everything 2. [Noun] Nothing, zero 3. [Adverb] At all.
Notes: English has a peculiar way of expressing years, e.g. 1923 = nineteen (hundred) twenty-three. All other non-Germanic Indo-European languages use thousand, i.e. one thousand nine hundred and twenty-three. This presents English with a problem for the first decade of a millennium, since "twenty hundred" is unacceptable and to refer to a year as simply "one", "two", or "three" would be incomprehensible. The solution has always been to use the term aught, e.g. we are now living in "aught five" ('05). This word has a negative variant, naught, which is the actual source of this sense of today's word (see Word History).
In Play: Be careful not to confuse this Good Word with the auxiliary verb, ought: "I ought to have naught to say to him since his release back in aught one ('01)." In a more positive vein, we may also say, "Has she aught to offer a poor lonely fellow like me?" when me mean "anything".
Word History: Today's is as authentic an English word as ever there was. It comes from Old English á "ever" + with (wight) "creature, thing," literally "ever a thing", pretty close to "everything". The word's meaning migrated to its antonym (from "all" to "nothing") via reanalysis, when some people mistook "a naught" for "an aught", drawing the line between the two words where it shouldn't be. Which leaves us with naughty. Its original meaning was "having naught, poor", back when poor folk were assumed to be bad. (We have naught but gratitude for Leonard Pelletier for aught he lent us in suggesting this Good Word.)