oughts

O1U1G2H4T1S1
UK/ɔːts/US/ɑːts/

A form of ought — Indicating duty or obligation.

Scrabble 10

Meanings

noun
  1. pluralplural of ought
nounoughts pl (plural only)
  1. alternativepluralplural onlyAlternative spelling of aughts (“first decade of a century”).

    2000, John Maxtone-Graham, Liners to the Sun, Sheridan House, Inc., →ISBN, page xii, And for the oughts—by which I suppose we must identify our new millennium's first decade—projected tonnage figures keep up the mind-boggling pace.

    2 more examples

    He and his clever staff of minor blackguards exploited to the full every weakness and caries in the London Society of the 'eighties, 'nineties, and 'oughts.

    1919, Harry Hamilton Johnston, The Gay-Dombeys: A Novel, Macmillan, page 172

    The "experts" of the Western world are slower to turn around than an ocean liner, and in Europe they were still yakking about the "population explosion" even as their 1970s schoolhouses, built in anticipation of traditional Catholic birth rates, were emptying through the nineties and oughts.

    2006, Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Regnery Publishing, →ISBN, page 13

Synonyms & antonyms

Also see

Rhymes & wordplay

Rhymes with oughts

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Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

oughts. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/oughts

MLA

“oughts.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/oughts. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “oughts,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/oughts.

Source: oughts on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.