Ought

How to spell ought

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce ought

What does ought mean?

1. verbUsed with 'to' to express duty, obligation, advisability, or strong likelihood.

Ought in a sentence

• You ought to apologise for missing the meeting.

• We ought to leave now if we want to beat the traffic.

Where does ought come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from Old English ahte, the past tense of agan, a verb that meant 'to owe' or 'to possess'. The same agan gave us the modern verbs 'owe' and 'own', so all three share one ancient root about having and being bound to give back. Over centuries the idea of 'owing' shifted from owing money or goods to owing a duty, which is how 'ought' came to express moral obligation and what one is expected to do. The spelling keeps the old -gh-, which once represented a rasping throaty sound (like the ch in Scottish 'loch') that English speakers stopped pronouncing long ago, leaving the letters silent. That silent -ough- cluster is the spelling trap, since the word sounds simply like 'awt' yet carries four extra letters, and it has the homophone 'aught', meaning 'anything', waiting to be confused with it.

How the word is built

• ought (from Old English ahte, past tense of agan: to owe, to possess); the silent -gh- preserves the old guttural sound once pronounced in the throat