ought

English

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

Old English āhte, past tense of āgan (“own, possess”)

Verb

ought

  1. (obsolete) Simple past of owe.
    • 1526, William Tyndale, trans. Bible, Luke VII:
      There was a certayne lender, which had two detters, the one ought five hondred pence, and the other fifty.
    • 1603, John Florio, translating Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Folio Society 2006, vol. 1 p. 182:
      witnesse Aristippus, who being urged with the affection he ought his children, as proceeding from his loynes, began to spit [...].

Verb

- (third-person singular simple present ought, present participle -, simple past -, past participle ought)

  1. (auxiliary) Indicating duty or obligation.
    I ought to vote in the coming election.
  2. (auxiliary) Indicating advisability or prudence.
    You ought to stand back from the edge of the platform.
  3. (auxiliary) Indicating desirability.
    He ought to read the book; it was very good.
  4. (auxiliary) Indicating likelihood or probability.
    We ought to arrive by noon if we take the motorway.
Usage notes
  • Ought is an auxiliary verb; it takes a following verb as its complement. This verb may appear either as a full infinitive (such as "to go") or a bare infinitive (such as simple "go"), depending on region and speaker; the same range of meanings is possible in either case. Additionally, it's possible for ought not to take any complement, in which case a verb complement is implied, as in, "You really ought to [do so]."
  • The negative of ought is either ought not (to) or oughtn't (to)
Synonyms
See also
Translations
indicating duty or obligation
indicating advisability or prudence
indicating desirability
indicating likelihood or probability

Pronoun

ought

  1. Alternative spelling of aught. anything

Adverb

ought (not comparable)

  1. Alternative spelling of aught. at all, to any degree.

See also

Noun

ought (plural oughts)

  1. A statement of what ought to be the case as contrasted to what is the case.
    • 1996, Mortimer Jerome Adler, The Time of Our Lives: The Ethics of Common Sense[1]:
      There are value judgments that are not reducible to observable matters of fact, and there are oughts that cannot be construed as hypothetical and, therefore, cannot be converted into statements of fact.
    • 2004, Jacques Maritain, John G. Trapani, Truth Matters: Essays in Honor of Jacques Maritain[2]:
      Is there a fallacy involved in deriving an ought from a set of exclusively factual or descriptive premises?

References

Etymology 2

Noun

ought (plural oughts)

  1. Alternative spelling of aught. cipher, zero, nought.

Statistics

Anagrams

↑Jump back a section
Last modified on 16 October 2012, at 19:02