Webster
✕

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Ought

Ought (a̤t), n. & adv. See Aught.

Ought, imp., p. p., or auxiliary. [Orig. the preterit of the verb to owe. OE. oughte, aughte, ahte, AS. āhte. √110. See Owe.] 1. Was or were under obligation to pay; owed. [Obs.]

This due obedience which they ought to the king. Tyndale.

The love and duty I long have ought you. Spelman.

[He] said . . . you ought him a thousand pound. Shak.

2. Owned; possessed. [Obs.]

The knight the which that castle ought. Spenser.

3. To be bound in duty or by moral obligation.

We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak. Rom. xv. 1.

4. To be necessary, fit, becoming, or expedient; to behoove; — in this sense formerly sometimes used impersonally or without a subject expressed. "Well ought us work." Chaucer.

To speak of this as it ought, would ask a volume. Milton.

Ought not Christ to have suffered these things? Luke xxiv. 26.

☞ Ought is now chiefly employed as an auxiliary verb, expressing fitness, expediency, propriety, moral obligation, or the like, in the action or state indicated by the principal verb.

Syn. — Ought, Should. Both words imply obligation, but ought is the stronger. Should may imply merely an obligation of propriety, expendiency, etc.; ought denotes an obligation of duty.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.