Ought
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /É”Ët/
- Rhymes: -É”Ët
- US IPA: /ɔt/
- cot-caught IPA: /É‘t/
- Homophones: aught
Origin 1
Old English Ähte, past tense of Ägan ("own, possess")
Verb
ought- (obsolete)
ought
(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 ....
Full definition of ought
Verb
- (auxiliary) Indicating duty or obligation.I ought to vote in the coming election.
- (auxiliary) Indicating advisability or prudence.You ought to stand back from the edge of the platform.
- (auxiliary) Indicating desirability.He ought to read the book; it was very good.
- (auxiliary) Indicating likelihood or probability.
- 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, Mr. Pratt's Patients Chapter 3, My hopes wa'n't disappointed. I never saw clams thicker than they was along them inshore flats. I filled my dreener in no time, and then it come to me that 'twouldn't be a bad idee to get a lot more, take 'em with me to Wellmouth, and peddle 'em out. Clams was fairly scarce over that side of the bay and ought to fetch a fair price.
- 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 so."
The negative of ought is either ought not (to) or oughtn't (to)
Synonyms
- should (In all senses)
Noun
ought
(plural oughts)- 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, 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, Is there a fallacy involved in deriving an ought from a set of exclusively factual or descriptive premises?