Fifth

How to spell fifth

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fifth

What does fifth mean?

1. adjectiveComing after the fourth in order, position, or rank.
2. nounOne of five equal parts of a whole.

Fifth in a sentence

• adjective

  Her office is on the fifth floor of the building.

• noun

  Each investor is entitled to a fifth of the profits.

• adjective

  This is the fifth time the meeting has been rescheduled.

• noun

  Roughly a fifth of the budget went on travel costs.

Where does fifth come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word descending from Old English fīfta, the ordinal form of fīf, meaning 'five'. The root goes back to the same Germanic source that gave German fünf and Dutch vijf, and ultimately to an ancient Indo-European word for the number five that also underlies Latin quinque and Greek pente. The ordinal suffix, today spelled -th, marks position in a sequence, exactly as in fourth and sixth. Over time the spelling settled with the two f letters, the f of 'five' followed by the f that begins the older suffix, which is why the cluster looks doubled even though many speakers casually pronounce only one f. That gap between how it sounds and how it is written, plus the awkward 'fth' ending, is the real spelling trap.

How the word is built

• fif- (from five, Old English fīf)
• -th (ordinal suffix forming the position in a sequence)