oughts

noun

1. (form-of, plural)plural of ought
2. (alt-of, alternative, plural, plural-only)Alternative spelling of aughts (“first decade of a century”).

   “He and his clever staff of minor blackguards exploited to the full every weakness and caries in the London Society of the 'eighties, 'nineties, and 'oughts.”

   “2000, John Maxtone-Graham, Liners to the Sun, Sheridan House, Inc., →ISBN, page xii, And for the oughts—by which I suppose we must identify our new millennium's first decade—projected tonnage figures keep up the mind-boggling pace.”

   “The "experts" of the Western world are slower to turn around than an ocean liner, and in Europe they were still yakking about the "population explosion" even as their 1970s schoolhouses, built in anticipation of traditional Catholic birth rates, were emptying through the nineties and oughts.”