You searched for: “ought”
aught, aught, naught, naughty, ought
aught (AWT) (pronoun)
Anything; any part or item; by any chance; in any respect (considered to be literary and old-fashioned): For aught I know, he could have left an hour ago.
aught (AWT) (noun)
The figure "0"; a cipher of zero: Manfred had aught, or zero, money available to pay for the bread.
naught (NAWT) (noun)
1. Nothing, nonexistent, insignificant; zero, a cipher; worthless, useless: All of the committee's work was for naught.
2. Zero (usually a naught): All of the experts efforts to complete the project on time was for naught.
"Naught: Something that is nothing."
—Evan Esar
naughty (NAW tee) (adjective)
1. Behaving disobediently or mischievously: His mother called him a naughty boy because he tracked mud into the house without even trying either to take his shoes off or at least trying to clean them before going in.
2. Used especially to describe a child who does not behave properly or does not obey a parent, teacher, etc.: The mother received a call from the principal of her daughter's school saying that the girl was naughty because she wouldn't quit talking while the teacher was trying to explain how to do arithmetic problems.
3. As a play on the word: a reference to anything with a zero, or zeros: Years that include zeros can be described as being naughty years; not because they behaved badly or were disobedient, but because they include "naughts or numbers with zeros".
ought (AWT) (verb)
1. Used to indicate what is expected: Tom mentioned, "They ought to be here by now and you ought to be able to read this book until they arrive."
2. Used to say or to suggest what should be done: Jane told her daughter, "You ought to get some rest now and then after that you ought to do your homework."

Someone has suggested that since zero means naught, then anyone who is born during a year that has zeros in it ought to be described as a naughty person (not with the meaning of "bad") because he/she was born in a year with a naught or naughts in its numerical composition; such as, 2001 or 2010; in other words, naughty years.

For aught I know, the more zeros in a year the naughtier the people are who were born in those years and the naughtiest, we must agree, ought to be those who came into existence in the year 2000 which has the most naughts.

This entry is located in the following unit: Confusing Words Clarified: Group A; Homonyms, Homophones, Homographs, Synonyms, Polysemes, etc. (page 9)
ought (AWT)
As a verb, ought is the only “correct” spelling: "I ought to go."
  1. Indicating obligation or duty: "We ought to work harder than this."
  2. Indicating desirability: "You ought to have been there; it was very interesting."
  3. Indicating obligation or duty: "Since it is raining, we ought to wear a raincoat."
  4. Indicating probability or likelihood: "She ought to finish by next week."

Unlike other auxiliary verbs, ought usually takes "to" with its accompanying verb: "We ought to go." Sometimes the accompanying verb is dropped if the meaning is clear: "Should we begin soon?" "Yes, we ought to."

In questions and negative sentences, especially those with contractions, "to" is also sometimes omitted: "Oughtn’t we be going soon?" This omission of "to"; however, is not common in written English.

Like "must" and auxiliary "need", "ought to" does not change to show past tense: "He said we ought to get moving along."

Usages; such as, "He hadn’t ought to come" and "She shouldn’t ought to say that" are common in many varieties of American English. They should be avoided in written English; in favor of the more standard variant ought not to.