Eleven

How to spell eleven

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce eleven

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does eleven mean?

1. otherThe number that comes after ten and before twelve, written as 11.

Eleven in a sentence

• The train departs at eleven in the morning.

• A football team takes the field with eleven players.

Where does eleven come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Eleven comes from the Old English endleofan, which literally meant 'one left' in the sense of 'one left over after ten'. The first part traces back to an, the ancestor of our modern word 'one', while the second part comes from a Germanic root meaning 'to leave' or 'remain', the same family that gives us 'leave'. So the original idea was that after counting all ten fingers you have one finger left over, hence 'one-left' became the name of the number. The same pattern lies behind 'twelve', which meant 'two left'. Over centuries the spelling softened and shortened from endleofan into 'eleven', which is why the modern word no longer obviously shows its 'one left' meaning and why the double letters of the original are gone.

How the word is built

• end- (one, from Old English an 'one')
• -leofan (left over, beyond ten)