Many names- One number

Last week, while reading the news online I came across an article entitled ‘100 best films of the noughties’. When I looked it up, I found that ‘Noughties’ is the word used to refer to the first decade of the new millennium (the years 2000 to 2009)  I did a little research, and discovered that ‘Noughties’ comes from the word ‘nought’, which is used to refer to the digit 0. I found there are a many ways in which we can name this number, for different purposes and in different contexts.



‘Zero’ and ‘cipher’ are both names for the number 0, but the use of ‘cipher’ for the number is only literary today. They both have the same origin,though, the Arabic ṣifr.


The words ‘nought’ and ‘naught’ ( both pronounced /nɔːt/) are spelling variants . They mean as a noun the number 0 or, as a pronoun, "nothing" (though their use as a pronoun is old fashioned)

‘Nought’ is used primarily to refer to the number (so that 0.2 = nought point two) whereas ‘naught’ is used for expressing ‘nothing’ (as in All their plans came to naught or he's naught but a worthless fool )

The famous game is commonly referred to as ‘noughts and crosses’, although you can also use ‘naught’.


From the misunderstanding of  ‘a nought/naught' as an 'aught/aught' (/ ɔːt/) in spoken language, comes the use of ‘aught’ and ‘ought’ to mean nothing or zero.


The term ‘Love’ is used in Tennis to refer to a a score of zero (as in love- fifteen) There are two different hypothesis as to why the word is used in this way. Some suggest it may come from the phrase play for love (the love of the game, not for money); while others associate it with French l'oeuf ('egg'), because of the similarities in shape between an egg and the written form of the number.


Also attributed to this similarity is the use of  ‘duck’ for the score of zero by a batsman in the game of cricket (which is actually short for duck's egg)



‘Nil’ can mean nothing, or it can be used, especially in British English, to mean zero in sports results (Our team won by two goals to nil.)


‘Zilch’ is an informal word used to represent the value of nothing, zero. The American equivalent is ‘Zip’. (‘Can I borrow some cash from you? How much do you have?’ ‘Sorry, Zilch/zip!’ )


In spoken English, especially for phone numbers or when the 0 occurs within a list of digits, we pronounce 0 as the letter o (oh). (Think about James Bond, also known as double-oh-seven)



I hoped you enjoyed this post, I found this information to be really interesting; most of the expressions were new to me. I wouldn’t have thought one has all these different options to choose from when talking about a number! I guess when it comes to languages, there’s always something new to be learnt!