What's the difference between naught and nought?

Naught


Definition:

  • (adv.) Nothing.
  • (adv.) The arithmetical character 0; a cipher. See Cipher.
  • (adv.) In no degree; not at all.
  • (a.) Of no value or account; worthless; bad; useless.
  • (a.) Hence, vile; base; naughty.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A ny attempt to rein in the vast US surveillance apparatus exposed by Edward Snowden's whistleblowing will be for naught unless government and corporations alike are subject to greater oversight.
  • (2) Support for Peres evaporated when successive bomb attacks killed dozens in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and talks with Syria came to naught.
  • (3) Cotton had 36 points, 8 assists, 5 rebounds and two steals for the Friars and it all ended up being for naught as No.
  • (4) 8.13pm BST Mary is being extremely naught in stealing Frances' leftovers.
  • (5) But the young striker is offside, and it's all for naught.
  • (6) 2.01am BST Tigers 0 - A's 0, bottom of the 3rd Stephen Vogt works a full count but it is for naught, as Verlander blows a fastball by him to make him his fifth strikeout victim.
  • (7) His efforts come to naught, as he's dispossessed by - I think - Tom Ince.
  • (8) Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon told reporters “basically, the president tried to both guilt people and then impugn their integrity” while Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota tweeted bitterly on Friday morning: “Now President Obama wants to talk?” But, all of Obama’s efforts proved for naught after Pelosi took the floor and spoke out against the deal.
  • (9) 9.56pm GMT EXTRA TIME, HALF TIME: Manchester United 1-0 Sunderland Another Sunderland corner comes to naught.
  • (10) If that is true, our efforts to act upon government advice and encouragement will have been for naught."
  • (11) United had started brightly, with Anthony Martial looking lively on the right wing, but a series of half-breaks and potential openings had come to naught.
  • (12) One was an opportunity for political dialogue, and the other an opportunity for reform following last year's BICI repor t. "Both those opportunities, however, came to naught, and the result may deal a deathblow, ironically, to the most moderate supporters of Bahrain's uprising," Dickinson says.
  • (13) When patients in treatment do not comply with medical directives, the most competent health care may go for naught and patients' well-being may be jeopardized.
  • (14) One day after a UN tribunal ruled overwhelmingly against Chinese claims to huge swaths of the strategically important waterway, Beijing rebuffed the verdict, calling it “a piece of paper that is destined to come to naught” .
  • (15) The most sophisticated repair may be for naught if the joints stiffen.
  • (16) A lifetime spent preparing, training, hour after agonizing hour, will have been for naught if an athlete dares to make a political statement at the wrong time about political events happening in a politicized Olympics; politicized in no small part by the IOC refusing to uphold their own charter when it applies to themselves.
  • (17) "Naught's had, all's Spent," laments Lady Macbeth, in the desolation that succeeds the bloody accomplishment of Duncan's murder.
  • (18) The resulting corner leads to another corner, which leads to naught, but this is all about the shot.
  • (19) Similarly prepared fractions from normal control spleens (NAc) containing 75 to 90% theta+cells and less than 10% Ig+ and naught cells were utilized in control cultures.
  • (20) At the broader policy level, policymakers must understand that efforts to reduce child mortality and improve child health will be for naught in the absence of efforts to protect against family-level deprivation.

Nought


Definition:

  • (n. & adv.) See Naught.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The family's efforts to bring the police officers responsible for Orun's death to justice had all come to nought.
  • (2) In 2008, for example, it staged Nought to Sixty, an ambitious show of 60 young artists, who presented week-long exhibitions, performances, talks, interventions, off-site projects and film screenings over six months.
  • (3) Britain has passed plenty of mind-boggling landmarks since 2007 when the credit crisis struck, but news that the government now owes £1 trillion – yes, that's twelve noughts – underlines just how long it will take for the economy to adjust to what Sir Mervyn King, in a speech on Tuesday night, called a "new equilibrium".
  • (4) Among the songs is Put Another Nought on the End … He's a Friend.
  • (5) Despite disagreeing with the visa cancellation, Newman had “no right to treat it as nought”, Nettle said, adding that he had shown “consummate disregard” for Australian law.
  • (6) The total viable counts and levels of Bacillus cereus, Clostridium welchii, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli were determined in 294 infant foods samples from nought to eight hours after preparation.
  • (7) With the derestriction of broadcasting hours, those Zen-like moments of stillness on British TV – filled with Test Card F , the little girl with an Alice band playing noughts and crosses on a blackboard, or IBA engineering announcements "for the radio and television trade" – began to disappear, to be replaced eventually by an endless flow of programmes, stretching from dawn till daybreak.
  • (8) Even as he conceded that the buoyant growth he'd once expected for 2012 had, literally, come to nought, the Bank of England's governor saw no urgent need for fresh stimulus .
  • (9) Fortunately, however, a petition of the Downing Street website to install Jeremy Clarkson as PM came to nought.
  • (10) So IBM’s Deep Blue could beat Gary Kasparov at chess, but would struggle against a three-year-old in a round of noughts and crosses.
  • (11) All the bright ideas and hard work that nurse educationalists are investing in the new courses will come to nought however, if equivalent time, energy and bright ideas are not invested in updating and refreshing experienced nurses.
  • (12) One nice second-half run ended in too-late pass to May Steven Naismith 7 Many neat touches, but with England dominating possession he foraged for the ball too far from goal and had little impact on anything much Ikechi Anya 5 Beat Clyne cleverly in eighth minute but ran the ball out of play; attempts to repeat the trick came to nought.
  • (13) If Google had tried to solve the game in the same way noughts and crosses was solved, it would have had to examine and rank an obscene amount of possible positions: in the ballpark of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them.
  • (14) And so both chess and go are resistant to the tactic by which simpler games, such as noughts and crosses or draughts (tic-tac-toe and checkers, to Americans), have been “solved”: by enumerating every possible move, and drawing up rules for how to guarantee that a computer will be able to play to at least a draw.
  • (15) It's like playing roulette: we haven't hit the nought yet but we know we will at some point."
  • (16) But of whence their sovereignty came, the treaty saith nought.
  • (17) "On a risk scale of nought to 10, it was just a one.
  • (18) Almost all the pain of benefit cuts for the most vulnerable has come to nought.
  • (19) Widefeller thumped it behind for a corner, which came to nought.
  • (20) And it turned out all Ryan’s effort was for nought.