There are several
names for the number 00 is both a number and the numerical digit used to represent that number in numerals. It plays a central role in mathematics as the additive identity of the integers, real numbers, and many other algebraic structures. As a digit, zero is used as a placeholder in place value systems...
in English, and concomitant names for the
decadeA decade is a period of ten years. The word is derived from the late Latin decas, from Greek decas, from deca. The other words for spans of years also come from Latin: lustrum , century , millennium . The term usually refers to a period of ten years starting at a multiple of ten...
s where the tens column contains the number 0. Several names for the number 0 include "
zero", "
cipher", "
naught", "
nought", "
love", "
duck", "
nil",
zilch,
zip, and (the letter) "
o" (often spelled as the exclamation "oh"). "
Aught" and "
ought" are also sometimes used, but this usage is technically incorrect. There are various subtleties of usage amongst them all.
"Zero" and "cipher"
"Zero" and "cipher" are both names for the number 0, but the use of "cipher" for the number is rare and only literary in English today. They are
doubletIn etymology, two or more words in the same language are called doublets or etymological twins when they have the same etymological root but have entered the language through different routes...
s, which means they have entered the language through different routes but have the same etymological root, which is the Arabic "صفر" (which transliterates as "sifr"). Via Italian this became "zefiro" and thence "zero" in modern English, French, and Italian. But via Spanish it became "cifra" and thence "cifre" in
Old FrenchOld French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from around 900 to 1300...
and "cipher" in modern English (and "chiffre" in modern French).
"Zero" is more commonly used in mathematics and science, whereas "cipher" is used only in a literary style. Both also have other
connotationConnotationsubjective cultural and/or emotional coloration in addition to the explicit or denotative meaning of any specific word or phrase in alanguage, i.e. emotional association with a word.-Usage:...
s. One may refer to a person as being a "social cipher", but would name them "Mr. Zero", for example.
In his discussion of "naught" and "nought" in
Modern English Usage (see below), H. W. Fowler uses "cipher" to name the number 0.
"Nought" and "naught" versus "aught" and "ought"
In English, "naught" and "nought" mean the number 0, or a figurative "nothing", whereas "aught" and "ought" (the latter in its noun sense) strictly speaking mean "all" or "anything", and are not names for the number 0, even though they are sometimes used as such. There are various subtleties of usage amongst them all.
The words "nought" and "naught" are spelling variants. They are, according to H. W. Fowler, not a modern accident as might be thought, but have descended that way from Old English. There is a distinction in
British EnglishBritish English, or UK English or English English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
between the two, but it is not one that is universally recognized. This distinction is that "nought" is primarily used in a literal arithmetic sense, where the number 0 is straightforwardly meant, whereas "naught" is used in poetical and rhetorical senses, where "nothing" could equally well be substituted. So the name of the board game is "noughts & crosses", whereas the rhetorical phrases are "bring to naught", "set at naught", and "availeth naught". The Readers' Digest
Right Word at the Right Time labels "naught" as "old-fashioned".
Whilst British English makes this distinction, in United States English, the spelling "naught" is preferred for both the literal and rhetorical/poetic senses.
"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").
The words "aught" and "ought" (the latter in its noun sense) similarly come from Old English "āwiht" and "ōwiht", which are similarly compounds of
a ("ever") and
wiht. Their meanings are thus the opposites to those of "naught" and "nought", and in English they in fact, strictly speaking, mean "anything" or "all". (Fowler notes that "aught" is an
archaismIn language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately or as part of a specific jargon or formula...
, and that "all" is now used in phrases such as "for all (that) I know", where once they would have been "for aught (that) I know".)
However, "aught" and "ought" are also sometimes used as names for 0, in contradiction of their strict meanings. The reason for this is a
rebracketingRebracketing is a common process in historical linguistics where a word originally derived from one source is broken down or bracketed into a different set of factors...
, whereby "a nought" and "a naught" have been misheard as "an ought" and "an aught".
Samuel JohnsonSamuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and political conservative, and has been...
thought that since "aught" was generally used for "anything" in preference to "ought", so also "naught" should be used for "nothing" in preference to "nought". However, he observed that "custom has irreversibly prevailed in using 'naught' for 'bad' and 'nought' for 'nothing'". Whilst this distinction existed in his time, in modern English, as observed by Fowler and The Reader's Digest above, it does not exist today. However, the sense of "naught" meaning "bad" is still preserved in the word "naughty", which is simply the noun "naught" plus the adjectival suffix "-y". This has never been spelled "noughty".
Decade names
- The first decade of the 20th century was called the Aughties, from the use of aught to mean naught.
- The first decade of the 21st century has, but more in jest, been called the Naughties or Noughties. The first term appears to be intended as a pun
A pun, or paronomasia, is a form of word play that deliberately exploits ambiguity between similar-sounding words for humorous or rhetorical effect...
on naughty and naught. The music and lifestyle magazine WiredWired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since March 1993, that reports on how technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
favoured this term which they claim was first proposed by the arts collective Foomedia in 1999. However, the term "Naughty Aughties" was suggested as far back as 1975 by Cecil AdamsCecil Adams is a name, possibly a pseudonym, which designates the author of The Straight Dope, a popular question and answer column published in The Chicago Reader since 1973. Ed Zotti is Adams' editor...
, in his column The Straight Dope. The second term is that used occasionally by the BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation, usually referred to by its abbreviation as the "BBC", is the longest established and largest broadcaster in the world...
and uses the favoured British spelling nought for the sense "zero".
"Love", "duck", and "nil"
In scores for sporting events, in particular
tennisTennis is a sport played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a strung racquet to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court....
,
cricketCricket is a bat-and-ball team sport that is first documented as being played in southern England in the 16th century. By the end of the 18th century, cricket had developed to the point where it had become the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being...
, and
footballAssociation football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players using a spherical ball...
, the number 0 has the very specialized names "love", "duck", and "nil". This can cause difficulty for radio and television newsreaders, because the reader must be aware of which name to use, when the score is often written as the digit "0" in the script. (McLeish recommends to readers that they write the number out on the script in words if necessary.)
There is no definitive origin for the
tennis scoreA tennis match is composed of points, games, and sets. A match is won as soon as a player or doubles pair wins the majority of prescribed sets, or reaches the prescribed total points in a tiebreak .Traditionally, a match is the best of three sets A tennis match is composed of points, games, and...
name for 0, "love". It first occurred in English, is of comparatively recent origin, and is not used in other languages. The most commonly believed hypothesis is that it is derived from English speakers mis-hearing the French "l'œuf", "the egg", which was the name for a score of zero used in French, because the symbol for a zero used on the scoreboard was an
ellipticalIn mathematics, an ellipse is the bounded case of a conic section, the geometric shape that results from cutting a circular conical or cylindrical surface with an oblique plane...
zero symbol, which visually resembled an egg. There is tangential support for this in the use of "duck" as the name for a score of zero in cricket, which name derives from the full name "the duck's egg" for that score, and which is still called "the duck" by some cricketers even now. The following cricketer's rhyme illustrates this:
A name related to the "duck egg" in cricket is the "goose egg" in
baseballBaseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond...
, a name whose origin is a description in
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded in 1851 and published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"—named for its staid appearance and style—is regarded as a national newspaper of record...
of 1886 where the journalist states that "the New York players presented the Boston men with nine unpalatable goose eggs", i.e. nine scores of zero.
However, the "l'oeuf" hypothesis has several problems, not the least of which is that in court tennis the score was not placed upon a scoreboard, and there is scant evidence that the French ever used "l'oeuf" as the name for a zero score in the first place, that name being as anecdotal as the hypothesis that "love" is then derived from it. (Jacob Bernoulli, for example, in his
Letter to a Friend, used "à but" to describe the initial zero-zero score in court tennis, which in English is "love-all".) Some alternative hypotheses have similar problems. For example: The assertion that "love" comes from the
ScotsScots or Lowland Scots is the variety of Germanic language traditionally spoken in lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster. It is not to be confused with Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language varieties traditionally spoken in the Highlands and Hebrides....
word "luff", meaning "nothing", falls at the first hurdle, because there is no authoritative evidence that there has ever been any such word in Scots in the first place.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first use of the word "love" in English to mean "zero" was to define how a game was to be played, rather than the score in the game itself. Gambling games could be played for stakes (money) or "for love (of the game)", ie. for zero stakes. The first such recorded usage quoted in the OED was in 1678. The shift in meaning from "zero stakes" to "zero score" is not an enormous conceptual leap, and the first recorded usage of the word "love" to mean "no score" is by
HoyleEdmond Hoyle is a writer best known for his works on the rules and play of card games. The phrase "according to Hoyle" came into the language as a reflection of his generally-perceived authority on the subject; since that time, use of the phrase has expanded into general use in situations in which...
in 1742 (OED, 2nd Edition).
Another name for 0 that is used in sports is "nil". This is derived from the Latin word "nihil", which means "nothing". Although common in British English, in football results and the like, it is only used infrequently U.S. English. The British "nil" is not slang, and occurs in formal contexts including technical jargon (e.g. "nil by mouth") and voting results.
"O" ("oh")
In spoken English, the number 0 is often read as the letter "o", often spelled as the exclamation oh. This is especially the case when the digit occurs within a list of other digits. Whereas one might say that "a million is expressed in base ten as a one followed by six zeroes", the series of digits "1070" would be read as "one o seven o". This is particularly true of
telephone numberA telephone number or phone number is a sequence of numbers used to call from one telephone line to another in a public switched telephone network. When telephone numbers were invented, they were short — as few as one, two or three digits — and were used by people to call a few neighbors...
s. Another example is James Bond's designation, 007, which is always read as "double-o seven", not "double-zero seven".
The letter "o" ("oh") is also used in spoken English as the name of the number 0 when saying times in the
24-hour clockThe 24-hour clock is a convention of time keeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours, numbered from 0 to 23. This system is the most commonly used time notation in the world today. The 12-hour clock is, however, still dominant in a handful of countries,...
, particularly in English used by U.S. mililtary forces. Although the number 0 in the tens column of the minutes part are always read as "zero", the tens column of the hour part may be either "oh" or "zero". Thus 16:05 is "sixteen zero five", but 08:30 is "oh eight thirty".
"Zilch"
"Zilch" is a
slangSlang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's dialect or language. It is often used as a way to say words that are not appropriate, and is not often found in the standard dictionary for the language...
term for the number 0 in
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
. It can also mean "nothing". The origin of the term is unknown.