Monday, March 10, 2008

What is "Aught"? And What Ought We Do About It?

Ever since late 1999, the word "aught" has troubled many people around the world. While some people fretted about the computer millennium bug or the possibility of the end of the world at the change of the millennia, others worried about the aught problem.

So what does aught mean? It can mean "anything," or "all" or "everything" according to Merriam-Webster, as in "for aught we know, he's a feisty rodent." But as a noun, aught means zero. So aught came up in the late 1990s as the answer to the question, What do we call this new decade?

The 1990s are "the Nineties," the 1920s are "the Twenties," but what name do you give a decade whose first number is zero? Many people suggested using aught. So the current decade would be called "the Aughts," as in, "Yeah, I was into snowboarding in the Nineties, but in the Aughts I got old and fat and started playing Wii Golf."

Yes, the Aughts is a really awkward and odd-sounding name for a decade, but we're coming to the end of the Aughts and no one seems to have come up with a better or more acceptable name.

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