ngkatsaras,
Do you know the meaning of
aught? It means, both
anything and
zero or nothing. It is the latter meaning to which I was referring. Perhaps it is a shortening of
naught.
Now, some facts:
• The gun caliber .3006 is called "thirty-aught-six."
• Historically, the years 1900-1909 were referred to as 'aught-one' through 'aught nine.' I am personally familiar with this usage as I remember phrases such as "back in aught-eight..."
Now consider that a group of ten years is named by the tens digit: the nineties are called so because of the 90 in 19
90. However, we don't really have a collective name such as
twenties or [/i]fifties[/i] for the ten numbers starting with 00 as in 20
00.
Given all this information, it is a logical extension to call the years 2000 to 2009 the Aughts, and requires no "additional definitions."
Ought and all of "it is [sic] homonyms," which are actually synonyms, make perfect sense to use as a name.
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A sacrifice is harder when no one knows you've made it.