Names for the number 0 in English Names for the number 0 in English Zero is the usual name for the number 0 in English. In British English "nought" is also used. In American English "naught" is used occasionally for zero, but as with British English, "naught" is more often used as an archaic word for nothing. "Nil", "love", and "duck" are used by different sports for scores of zero. It is quite common in English to describe decades with a plural of the first year of the decade for example "the nineties" which can be written as "the 90s". There was a debate on what to
Names for the number 0 in English the name for a score of zero by a batsman in cricket, which name derives from the full name "the duck's egg" for that score. The following cricketer's rhyme illustrates this: A name related to the "duck egg" in cricket is the "goose egg" in baseball, a name whose origin is a description in "The New York Times" of 1886 where the journalist states that "the New York players presented the Boston men with nine unpalatable goose eggs", i.e. nine scores of zero. However, the "l'oeuf" hypothesis has several problems, not the least of which is that in court tennis