Talk:Names for the number 0 in English

Fits Wikipedia?
I'm not sure if this fits Wikipedia. It's more like an entry for a style guide.--87.162.6.4 (talk) 17:33, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Point taken. I created the entry because the words often confuse me and thought others would appreciate some insight. It could be moved to an other article talking about style, or possibly expanded and renamed to include other pairs/group of words whose usage is often confused. What do you think? Jubilee♫ clipman 02:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * At present, its a pretty good documentation of what the number is called. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 16:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

'Nil' does not occur in US English?
What's the reference for that? Admittedly, I'd say either 'zero' or 'nothing' (as in, 'they won 3 to nothing') are far more common, but I've certainly heard nil in the context of US sporting events at least as much as zip, or zilch. Though, in US English 'nil' seems to be more often used in context of prediction ("chances are nil"), finance (cost/assets), or results, particularly of a search ("It came up nil"). A Google News Archive search comes up with a significant number of results for 'nil' in US newspapers over the past 100+ years.--24.3.14.57 (talk) 03:34, 1 September 2009 (UTC)


 * "Nil" does indeed occur in US English. I see that since this Talk thread was written (2009), this has been addressed in the article, which acknowledges U.S. use of "nil" albeit perhaps less than British use of the term. The article is correct that it came from Latin "nihil". — ¾-10 00:12, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Null
Why the variant 'null' is not discussed?--79.111.88.251 (talk) 00:52, 24 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I added an appropriate "see also" section to point the reader to more information about "null". The "see also" links are the articles null (which takes the reader to various senses of the word) and null (SQL) (which covers the fact that "null" in the relational database sense of the word is not the same as zero). — ¾-10 00:25, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Dictionary - help with some humor
The following may be helpful to this article. Oxford University Press, Concise Oxford Dictionary, 10th Edition reports;

naught Â· pron. archaic nothing. Â· n. N. Amer. variant spelling of nought. PHRASES come to naught be ruined or foiled. set at naught archaic disregard; despise. ORIGIN OE nQwiht, -wuht, from nQ no + wiht thing (see wight).

nought Â· n. the digit 0. Â· pron. variant spelling of naught.

ought1 Â· modal v. (3rd sing. present and past ought) 1 used to indicate duty or correctness. Ã˜ used to indicate a desirable or expected state. Ã˜ used to give or ask advice. 2 used to indicate something that is probable. ORIGIN OE Qhte, past tense of Qgan ow (see owe).

ought2 (also aught) Â· n. archaic term for nought. ORIGIN C19: perh. from an ought, by wrong division of a nought.

ought3 Â· pron. variant spelling of aught1.

aught1 /O;t/ (also ought) Â· pron. archaic anything at all. ORIGIN OE Qwiht (see aye2, wight).

aught2 Â· n. variant spelling of ought2.

and ...

Aught http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_shell#Buckshot Buckshot size is designated actual diameter or (traditionally) by number, with smaller numbers being larger shot; sizes larger than "0" ("aught") are designated by multiple zeros. "00" ("double-aught") is the most commonly used size. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun#Shot For buckshot the numbers usually start at 4 (6.1 mm, 0.24 in) and go down to 1, 0, 00 ("double ought"), 000, and finally 0000 (9.7 mm, .38 in).

More just for fun ... (From a previous nought vs naught) Jethro Bowdine of the Beverly Hillbillies 1960s TV and the later movie version used the turn of the twentieth century term naught in a deliberate grammatical error of nought. FYI - Jethro was not the first on TV or the movies to use this deliberate error. It was used to define an older style, backwards type character with a mistaken grasp of proper English.

Naught for Jethro was a running character verbal joke that ought to have been nought which made him a nothing, by the wrong division of a nought.

See the dictionary definitions below to better understand the word play. Today, with the continued massacre of the Queens English, the parody even in proper American English is often lost to the masses.

For example, Jethro wanted to be a double-naught spy. A humorous characterization of the 007 James Bond character. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beverly_Hillbillies#Jethro_Bodine

This has led to a series of double-naught parodies using the double-naught name. And the word naught is now considered a North American slang term for nought. Try a Google search for it to see what I mean. And also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nought

In 1900, that year was sometimes referred to as the double-nought year. That quickly became corrupted to be pronounced as ought. The year 1903 was often referred and pronounced as ought-three but written as ‘03. Another example is the M1903 US rifle that was referred to as the ought-three. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1903_Springfield#Adoption

Noughts and crosses was an early name for tic-tac-toe. This game is still referred to its earlier name in the UK. But Americans dropped the archaic English terms for the more common American name. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac-toe  And it should not be confused with the novel by a similar name. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noughts_%26_Crosses_(novel_series) â€“ even though the Xs and 0s abound.

To make things more interesting, shotgun shell companies in the United States, in contrast to the UK system of S.G. cartridges (S. G. = small game not shot gun), uses the term aught, a deliberate variant of nought to define buck shot size. The most common is double-aught buck written 00 buck refers to the size and not a double zero. But, this does not stop people from using aught instead of nought!

Remember, nought ought not be a double North American naught, nor a aught by size or a knot by nautical speed or tied into a knot. ;-} Jrcrin001 (talk) 22:28, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Zed?
I've heard that in Canada people say 'zed' instead of zero. I believe I might have heard this from British English speakers before. Any ideas? IronMaidenRocks (talk) 16:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * You're on the right track—but in reference to letters rather than numbers. British English and most Commonwealth English use the name "zed" for z|the letter "z" (the 26th letter of the English alphabet), whereas American English calls it by the name "zee". (Meanwhile, in spelling alphabets it's called "zebra" instead, which is less prone to misunderstanding across a crackly audio connection.) — ¾-10 00:33, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I know about that, but I specifically heard the word was used for 'zero' in Canada. --IronMaidenRocks (talk) 01:09, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Word ordering
Currently the lead sentence is: "There are names for the number 0 in English and related concepts, and there are concomitant names for the decades whose tens column contains the number 0. The names for the number 0 include "zero", "cipher", "null", "naught", "nought", "love", "duck", "nil", "nada", "zilch", "zip"..."

I do not think this is very clear. Particularly for anyone who is not an adult native English speaker. The first point is that zero and nothing can not usually be used interchangeably. If that is taken as given then in most versions of English most of those terms are either:
 * cipher -- very very rear outside expert usage.
 * Null: Not a substitute for zero, but either a technical computing term for nothing, or a Eurovision joke..
 * Nil, love, duck used are in sporting connotations, or as slang when used elsewhere.
 * zilch, zip: are slang ought [sic] not to be in the lead
 * "nought" and "naught" -- in the UK nought is used for zero while naught is an archaic form of nothing. It seems from this article that naught is little used in the US.

I am going to be bold and rewrite the lead in the hope that it simplifies it and better sums up the contents of the article. -- PBS (talk) 16:50, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

In the re-write I removed the following: "The use of "aught" and "ought" to mean "zero" is looked down on by some especially older, upper-class people because "aught" originally meant something else and because the new meaning arose due to a reinterpretation of "a naught" as "an aught"."

"is looked down on by some especially older, upper-class people because" really?! that looks like pure OR to me. If something like that is to be in the lead then it need to be well sourced. -- PBS (talk) 17:19, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Hmm yes, the voicing of that removed piece smacks of high-schooler writing Satyris410 (talk) 21:53, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Nowt
"Naught" and "nought" come from the Old English "nāwiht" and "nōwiht", respectively, both of which mean "nothing". They are compounds of no- ("no") and wiht("thing").[4][5][6]"

You can see then where the lovely Yorkshire words 'nowt' and 'owt' come from; meaning nothing and something respectively. Satyris410 (talk) 21:50, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

It is claimed that aught does not mean nothing
The heading on the word aught claims that it's true definition means any or anything and that when it's used to describe zero or nothing that it is being incorrectly used. This seems like linguistic prescriptivism and incorrect in top of that, at least according to merriam:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aught

I will fix it if I can ever get around to it. TiddiesTiddiesTiddies (talk) 16:03, 17 February 2023 (UTC)