Names for the number 0 in English call the first decade of the 21st century, as "00s" is not usually pronounced as a word. Apart from side stepping the issue and calling the decade the "two-thousands" (2000s) there is no agreed wording, although in Britain and some other countries "noughties" was also used. There is a need to maintain an explicit distinction between digit zero and letter O, which, because they are both usually represented graphically in English orthography (and indeed most orthographies using Latin script and Arabic numerals) with a simple circle or oval, have a centuries-long history of being frequently conflated. However, in spoken English,
Names for the number 0 in English well be substituted. So the name of the board game is "noughts & crosses", whereas the rhetorical phrases are "bring to naught", "set at naught", and "availeth naught". The Reader's Digest "Right Word at the Right Time" labels "naught" as "old-fashioned". Whilst British English makes this distinction, in United States English, the spelling "naught" is preferred for both the literal and rhetorical/poetic senses. "Naught" and "nought" come from the Old English "nāwiht" and "nōwiht", respectively, both of which mean "nothing". They are compounds of "no-" ("no") and "wiht" ("thing"). The words "aught" and "ought" (the latter in its noun sense)