{"id":4581,"date":"2025-03-03T21:17:28","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T21:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=4581"},"modified":"2025-03-03T21:17:28","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T21:17:28","slug":"naughty-and-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=4581","title":{"rendered":"Naughty and Nice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Yesterday I talked about using the word \u201caught\u201d to mean \u201czero.\u201d I probably should have also mentioned that although most people that I knew used the word aught, some said the word \u201cnaught.\u201d The dictionary says that naught means \u201cnothing,\u201d so I can see why some people used it when referring to zero. But if you dig a little further, some dictionaries say that its use is archaic or restricted to literary uses. It\u2019s most often used in sentences or phrases like \u201cHis studying was for <em>naught<\/em>, since he flunked.\u201d\u00a0<br>So I guess if you\u2019re into these old words, the rule of thumb is \u201caught\u201d is preferred when dealing with numbers and \u201cnaught\u201d is preferred outside of math.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that that\u2019s our of the way, you might be interested to learn that the word \u201cnaughty\u201d is derived from \u201cnaught\u201d \u2014 like, someone might have <em>naught<\/em> morals or manners. But the original meaning of naughty was \u201cpoor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I suppose we should give \u201cnice\u201d equal time with \u201cnaughty\u201d \u2014 after all, they seem to kind of go together. Nice is from the Latin <em>nescius<\/em>, that means not-knowing. So nice originally meant foolish or ignorant. It didn\u2019t used to be nice to be nice. But over time, the word\u2019s meaning took on a number of meanings. Today, someone is considered nice if they\u2019re polite and kind.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I usually think of naughty and nice mostly around Christmas time \u2014 we always told our kids and grandkids that Santa Clause kept a naughty and nice list. The fact that Santa kept these lists didn\u2019t become apparent until the song \u201cSanta Claus Is Coming to Town\u201d became popular (in 1934, according to my extensive research.) I guess it\u2019s good that the song wasn\u2019t written earlier because naughty and nice meant something very different than what they do today.<br>\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I talked about using the word \u201caught\u201d to mean \u201czero.\u201d I probably should have also mentioned that although most people that I knew used the word aught, some said the word \u201cnaught.\u201d The dictionary says that naught means \u201cnothing,\u201d &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=4581\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4582,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581\/revisions\/4582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}