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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.
Examples of aught in a Sentence
Virginia Chamlee, PEOPLE, 25 Oct. 2025
Pennie Clark Ianniciello spent decades as Costco’s book buyer, building the company into a major publishing-industry player by the mid-aughts.
—Molly Fischer, New Yorker, 20 Oct. 2025
Since then, the Hussar pelisse ironically became something of a uniform in the early aughts for musicians, including Michael Jackson, Beyoncé and Rihanna, and bands such as British alt-indie group The Libertines and US pop-punk band My Chemical Romance.
—Leah Dolan, CNN Money, 17 Oct. 2025
From Hilary Duff to High School Musical, the aughts were made for tweens who loved music, and so much of those iconic musical performances came from the Disney Channel.
—Allison McClain Merrill, Parents, 10 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for aught
Cite this Entry
“Aught.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aught. Accessed 29 Oct. 2025.
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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