modal verb (negative ought not to, short form especially BrE oughtn't to)
1 used to say what is the right thing to do:
They ought to apologize. * 'Ought I to write to say thank you?' 'Yes, I think you ought (to).' * They ought to have apologized (= but they didn't). * Such things ought not to be allowed. * He oughtn't to have been driving so fast. -< SHOULD
2 used to say what you expect or would like to happen:
Children ought to be able to read by the age of 7. * Nurses ought to earn more.
3 used to say what you advise or recommend:
We ought to be leaving now. * This is delicious. You ought to try some. * You ought to have come to the meeting. It was interesting.
4 used to say what has probably happened or is probably true:
If he started out at nine, he ought to be here by now. * That ought to be enough food for the four of us. * Oughtn't the water to have boiled by now? -> MODAL
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for ought to is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does ought to appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — ought to appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
