aughts
/oːts/
"aughts" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“aughts” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The first decade of a century, such as 1900 to 1909 or 2000 to 2009, whose digit in the tens place is zero; the noughties.
Corpus desk
Index EN-aughts · aughts · English
aughts · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "A" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | aughts |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /oːts/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “aughts” in English
Rare enough to double-check
aughts is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /oːts/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The first decade of a century, such as 1900 to 1909 or 2000 to 2009, whose digit in the tens place is zero; the noughties.".
No misspelling variants are generated for aughts in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. This entry stands alone in our confusable dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From the sense of aught to refer to the number zero. The correct English form is aughts, spelled A-U-G-H-T-S.
Definition
- 1The first decade of a century, such as 1900 to 1909 or 2000 to 2009, whose digit in the tens place is zero; the noughties.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how aughts appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The 20th Century’s Aughts and Teens: OPERETTA [chapter title]
When the staccato, Neptunes-ian single “Boyfriend” was released in March, musical prognosticators were quick to peg the album it portended, Believe, as Justin Bieber’s Justified, a grown-and-sexy, R&B-centric departure that evolved millennial teenybopper Justin Timberlake into one of the unifying pop-music figures of the aughts.
Etymology
From the sense of aught to refer to the number zero.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.