Fifteenth

How to spell fifteenth

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fifteenth

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fifteenth mean?

1. adjectiveComing after the fourteenth in a sequence; numbered fifteen in order.

Fifteenth in a sentence

• Her birthday falls on the fifteenth of June.

• The runner crossed the line in fifteenth place.

Where does fifteenth come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends directly from Old English, where the ordinal was fiftēoþa, built from fīftīene meaning 'fifteen' and the ordinal ending that survives today as -th. The first element traces back to fīf, the Old English word for 'five', a thoroughly Germanic root shared with Dutch vijf and German fünf and ultimately related to Latin quinque. The -teen part is simply an old form of 'ten', so fifteen literally meant 'five and ten'. The spelling preserves the shift from the 'v' sound of 'five' to the 'f' of 'fif', which explains why writers should remember fif- and not 'fiv-' before the -teen. The ordinal -th ending, used to turn cardinal numbers into ranking words, has been a steady feature of English counting since the earliest records.

How the word is built

• fif- (from five)
• -teen (ten)
• -th (ordinal suffix)