Login or register (free and only takes a few minutes) to participate in this question.
You will also have access to many other tools and opportunities designed for those who have language-related jobs (or are passionate about them). Participation is free and the site has a strict confidentiality policy.
Explanation: this is not your answer, but an explanation of why the word means nothing, so it could not be used a unit of measure...??
Several of us were recently discussing the word "ought" as a synonym for "zero." My father often used this word, particularly in phrases relating to a year, as "It happened in nineteen ought seven." Is this word related to "ought" in the sense of obligation, or to "naught" meaning nothing?
The word ought meaning 'nothing' is chiefly a spelling variant of aught, which in turn is related to naught meaning 'nothing'.
There are a few words involving an a or o followed by ught. The first one to consider for your question is aught. This word now exists as a noun and an adverb, the former in the sense 'anything; any part' ("for aught I know") and the latter in the sense 'at any degree; at all; in any respect'. The adverb is considered archaic, although the noun should probably be considered old-fashioned or very formal.
This word comes from Old English, from the elements elements a 'ever' (the ancestor of aye, itself old-fashioned or archaic) and wiht 'thing' (the ancestor of wight, chiefly 'a living thing; human', but also old-fashioned or archaic).
The word naught, sometimes spelled nought, is also from Old English, from na 'no' and the same wiht 'thing' mentioned above. It has a few uses, including a pronoun meaning 'nothing' ("their efforts came to naught") and a noun meaning 'nothing' or meaning 'a zero; cipher (0)', along with some archaic or obsolete adverbial and adjectival senses.
The aught, or ought, you are asking about also means 'zero' or 'nothing'. It is formed from metanalysis of naught, where the phrase a naught was taken as an aught.
As for the other words having the same spelling, there is a Scottish aught meaning 'to own' or 'to owe', as well as a Scottish aught meaning 'eight'. The first word is also spelled ought, also in Scottish use. The other ought is a verbal auxilliary used to express duty, moral obligation, propriety, or the like. The 'eight' word is related to eight; all the others are related to owe. None are related to the words that have been the primary focus of our discussion.
It is mor usually 'ought' of course; but please not there may be an error in your source text, as large wire sizes are normally measured in KILO circular mils = 1,000 times, and not 1/1,000,000 th!
Automatic update in 00:
Answers
17 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +1
nfg
Explanation: this is not your answer, but an explanation of why the word means nothing, so it could not be used a unit of measure...??
Several of us were recently discussing the word "ought" as a synonym for "zero." My father often used this word, particularly in phrases relating to a year, as "It happened in nineteen ought seven." Is this word related to "ought" in the sense of obligation, or to "naught" meaning nothing?
The word ought meaning 'nothing' is chiefly a spelling variant of aught, which in turn is related to naught meaning 'nothing'.
There are a few words involving an a or o followed by ught. The first one to consider for your question is aught. This word now exists as a noun and an adverb, the former in the sense 'anything; any part' ("for aught I know") and the latter in the sense 'at any degree; at all; in any respect'. The adverb is considered archaic, although the noun should probably be considered old-fashioned or very formal.
This word comes from Old English, from the elements elements a 'ever' (the ancestor of aye, itself old-fashioned or archaic) and wiht 'thing' (the ancestor of wight, chiefly 'a living thing; human', but also old-fashioned or archaic).
The word naught, sometimes spelled nought, is also from Old English, from na 'no' and the same wiht 'thing' mentioned above. It has a few uses, including a pronoun meaning 'nothing' ("their efforts came to naught") and a noun meaning 'nothing' or meaning 'a zero; cipher (0)', along with some archaic or obsolete adverbial and adjectival senses.
The aught, or ought, you are asking about also means 'zero' or 'nothing'. It is formed from metanalysis of naught, where the phrase a naught was taken as an aught.
As for the other words having the same spelling, there is a Scottish aught meaning 'to own' or 'to owe', as well as a Scottish aught meaning 'eight'. The first word is also spelled ought, also in Scottish use. The other ought is a verbal auxilliary used to express duty, moral obligation, propriety, or the like. The 'eight' word is related to eight; all the others are related to owe. None are related to the words that have been the primary focus of our discussion.
Explanation: Wire gauge - The wire gauge, or size of the wire, also determines how much resistance the wire has. The larger the wire, the less resistance. The smaller the gauge, the larger the wire -- so a 16-gauge wire is bigger than a 24-gauge wire. Wire gauges go all the way down to zero, which is also called 1/0 (one aught). Even bigger than 1/0 is 00 (2/0, or two aught), and so on. The diameter of a 4/0 (four aught) wire is almost half an inch (1.27 cm).
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +2
