oughtn't
AmericanUsage
See contraction, ought 1.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
We can’t look away — and we oughtn’t, as she argued through the public display of her son’s body.
From New York Times
A recent article in the Nation highlighted changing attitudes on the political left of center: “Ceding central cities to homeless encampments,” it said, “oughtn’t to have become the default in cities up and down the West Coast.”
From Washington Post
“He oughtn’t be relieved of liability on the transparently false assertion that he believed his own self-serving fiction,” Bowman told me.
From Slate
Which I suppose just goes to show that one oughtn’t to leap to conclusions about what people mean, at least not without further conversation.
From New York Times
“The presidency has only a certain amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtn’t to expend it on this,” said one.
From The Guardian
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.