Thursday, May 7, 2009

We Aught to Be Glad It Didn't Take Till 2010

Recently I blogged about the word "aught" used to name years in this decade: We're in the "Twenty aughts." There was an election in "aught four."

My inspiration: a Los Angeles Times column by Michael Hiltzik, in which he used the word (although he spelled it "ought").

I was happy to see that finally -- finally -- someone had embraced a word for our decade. A green shoot, if you will.

Well, last night, the green shoot done took root. Stephen Colbert, on his show, mentioned a run-in he had with billionaire Richard Branson "back in aught seven."

That, I suspect, was the big step the word needed to eventually work its way into the popular lexicon. I'm betting that, in about two or three years, "aught" will be the word of choice for the years between 2000 and 2009. (Though I'm not sure it will be the spelling of choice.)

Either way, it's good news that we may have finally named our decade. And it only took us nine years and five months!

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2 comments:

Matthew Newton said...

Random, but Istill remember my father calling out, "double-aught Montross" in support of the UNC basketball player from the early 90's whose jersey number was "00."

June Casagrande said...

That's one of those funny random family things that always stay with you. Kinda cool.

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