Names for the number 0 in English when the rifle caliber .30-06 Springfield (introduced in 1906) is accordingly referred to by the name "thirty-aught-six". The words "nought" and "naught" are spelling variants. They are, according to H. W. Fowler, not a modern accident as might be thought, but have descended that way from Old English. There is a distinction in British English between the two, but it is not one that is universally recognized. This distinction is that "nought" is primarily used in a literal arithmetic sense, where the number 0 is straightforwardly meant, whereas "naught" is used in poetical and rhetorical senses, where "nothing" could equally
Old English grammar Old English had free word order, this is not quite true, as there were conventions for the positioning of subject, object and verb in clause. Old English did not use forms equivalent to "who, when, where" in relative clauses (as in "The man whom I saw") or subordinate clauses ("When I got home, I went to sleep"). Instead, relative clauses used one of the following: Preposition-fronting ("The man with whom I spoke") did not normally occur. Subordinate clauses tended to use correlative conjunctions, e.g. The word order usually distinguished the subordinate clause (with verb-final order) from the main clause (with