2021-05-13 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด – A – aught & ought & naught

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2021-05-13

ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด – A – aught & ought & naught

แนะนำการใช้ ตามที่ส่วนใหญ่ใช้ แต่ละท้องถิ่น

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Dictionary.com

ออกเสียง aught & ought = ‘AWT’

ออกเสียง naught or nought = ‘NAWT’

Abused, Confused, & Misused Words by Mary Embree

aught

= anything whatever; any part:

for aught I know; a cipher; zero

Not to be confused with:

naught = nothing; be without result:

come to naught; lost;

= ruined

ought = should; duty or obligation:

You ought to go to the memorial service.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

aught

Did You Know?

Pronoun

If you know aught which does behove my knowledge

/ Thereof to be inform'd, imprison't not / In ignorant concealment,

Polixenes begs Camillo in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale,

employingthe "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 itto 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 for a while the phrase "the aughts"

was bandied about

asa proposed label for the decade that began in the year 2000.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Aught

The noun aught means “zero,”

or, when used in the plural as “the aughts,”

a wayof referring to the decade between 2000 and 2009.

It originallymeant “nothing,”

and derives from another word that means “nothing”: naught.

Naught comes from Old English

and the false divisioncreated by the phonetic resemblance

between “a naught” and “an aught”

isto blame for the existence of two such otherwise similar words.

Dictionary of Problem Words in English

aught & ought & naught     

Aught means “any little part,”

“in any respect”:

“You are right for aught I know.”

Ought indicates duty, obligation:

“Everyone ought to attend the meeting.”

Naught means ‘nothing,” “zero”:

“Our work availed naught.”