FromMiddle Englishoughte,aughte,aȝte,ahte, fromOld Englishāhte, first and third person singular past tense ofOld Englishāgan(“to own, possess”), equivalent toowe +-t.
Cognate withSanskritईश्वर(īśvará,“capable of, liable”).
ought
- (obsolete)simplepast ofowe
1603,Michel de Montaigne, “Of Friendship”, inJohn Florio, transl.,The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes forEdward Blount […],→OCLC,page90:[…]witneſſeAriſtippus, who being vrged with the affection heought his children, as proceeding from his loynes, began to ſpeake and ſpit […].
ought
- (auxiliary) Indicatingduty orobligation.
Iought to vote in the coming election.
- (auxiliary) Indicatingadvisability orprudence.
Youought to stand back from the edge of the platform.
- (auxiliary) Indicatingdesirability.
Heought to read the book; it was very good.
- (auxiliary) Indicatinglikelihood orprobability.
Weought to arrive by noon if we take the motorway.
1913,Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter III, inMr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London:D[aniel] Appleton and Company,→OCLC: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 andought to fetch a fair price.
- Ought is an auxiliary verb; it takes a following verb as its complement. This following 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 forought not to take any complement, in which case a verb complement is implied, as in, “You really ought to [do so].”
- The negative ofought is eitherought not (to) oroughtn't (to) (yetoughtn't've:oughtn't *(to) have)
indicating duty or obligation
- Belarusian:(predicative)паві́нен m(pavínjen),паві́нна f orn(pavínna),паві́нны pl(pavínny)
- Danish:burde (da)
- Dutch:moeten (nl),behoren (nl)
- Esperanto:devi (eo)
- Finnish:pitää (fi),tulla (fi),kuulua (fi)
- French:devoir (fr)
- Galician:deber (gl),ter de (gl)
- German:sollen (de)
- Greek:θα έπρεπε(tha éprepe),όφειλε(ófeile)
- Ancient Greek:ὀφείλω(opheílō)
- Hungarian:kell (hu)
- Italian:dovere (it)
- Khmer:គួរតែ(kuə tae)
- Latin:dēbeō (la),Usegerundive
- Occitan:dever (oc),deure (oc)
- Persian:باید (fa)(bâyad)
- Polish:powinien (pl) impf
- Portuguese:dever (pt)
- Russian:до́лжен (ru)(dólžen),обя́зан (ru)(objázan)
- Serbo-Croatian:trebati (sh) impf orpf,morati (sh) impf orpf
- Sorbian:
- Lower Sorbian:dejaś
- Spanish:deber (es)
- Swedish:borde (sv)
- Thai:please add this translation if you can
- Ukrainian:пови́нен(povýnen),зобов'я́заний(zobovʺjázanyj),му́сить(músytʹ)
- Vietnamese:cần (vi),phải (vi)
- Welsh:dylu (cy)
- Yiddish:זאָלן(zoln)
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indicating advisability or prudence
indicating likelihood or probability
ought
- Alternative spelling ofaught;anything
1658,Joseph Hall,The Devout Soul, Or, Rules of Heavenly Devotion Also the Free Prisoner, Or, the Comfort of Restraint:Is it a small benefit, that I am placed there[…] where I see no drunken comessations, no rebellious routs, no violent oppressions, no obscene rejoicings, norought else that might either vex or affright my soul?
ought (notcomparable)
- Alternative spelling ofaught;at all, to any degree.
ought (pluraloughts)
- A statement of what ought to be the case as contrasted with 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 areoughts 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 anought from a set of exclusively factual or descriptive premises?
ought (pluraloughts)
- Alternative spelling ofaught;cipher,zero,nought.
1838 March –1839 October,Charles Dickens, “Nicholas and His Uncle (to Secure the Fortune Without Loss of Time) Wait upon Mr. Wackford Squeers, the Yorkshire Schoolmaster”, inThe Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London:Chapman and Hall, […], published1839,→OCLC,page24:I go back at eight o'clock to-morrow morning, and have got only three—threeoughts an ought—three twos six—sixty pound.
FromOld Englishāht,ōht, shortening ofāwiht,ōwiht.
ought
- anything,everything
- something
