1904 M. Beerbohm Around Theatres (1924) II. 50 In the 'seventies..Demon King and Fairy Queen..were familiar and popular things. But to satirise them now, in the 'noughts..is to shoot at a target long since removed.

1932 H. Granville-Barker Exit Planché—Enter Gilbert in J. Drinkwater Eighteen-sixties 102 You would go by first choice to the Royal Strand Theatre... It stood—and was still standing in the ‘noughts’ of this century—midway between the two churches.

1983 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 8 June a22/1 The next decade will, obviously, be called the Nineties, but what does one call the decade after that?.. Why not..call the decade the Noughts?

1996 Daily Tel. 19 Sept. 23/6 I am still puzzled by what we are going to call the first years of the 21st century... If this is ‘the Nineties’, should it be ‘the noughts’?

2001 Philadelphia Inquirer (Nexis) 12 Apr. d1 If the 1980s were the skyscraper decade and the '90s the hotel decade, the naughts promise to be the garage decade in Philadelphia.

c1275 (?a1200) Laȝamon Brut (Calig.) (1978) 13947 Eoure godes ne beoð nohtes in helle heo niðer liggeð.

c1440 in C. Horstmann Yorkshire Writers (1895) I. 305 (MED) Ellis oure dedis are noghtes bot als false moneye whare-with mene may noghte by.

c1450 (c1400) Bk. Vices & Virtues (Huntington) (1942) 82 (MED) Wiþ-out witt and good auisement, þes þre þinges beþ nouȝtes.

a1393 J. Gower Confessio Amantis (Fairf.) vii. 412 (MED) What man hath that complexion, Full of ymaginacion, Of dredes and of wrathful thoghtes, He fret himselven al to noghtes.

1562 N. Winȝet Certain Tractates (1888) I. 21 Quhilk auctoritie geue ȝe esteme as nochtis, be reasoun it wes geuin to ȝow..be ane papiste bischope.

a1564 Q. Kennedy Compend. Ressonyng f. 20^v It giues plain persuasion, his ground in this heid to be nochtis.

1589 R. Greene Menaphon sig. L Repentant thoughts Of daies ill spent, for that which profits noughts.

1614 G. Chapman Evgenia ii. Inductio God doth euen our thoughts That nothing of good men, may come to noughts.