Nine

How to spell nine

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce nine

What does nine mean?

1. otherThe cardinal number equal to one more than eight.

Nine in a sentence

• The meeting starts at nine in the morning.

• There were nine players left on the field.

Where does nine come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Nine comes from the Old English nigon, the native Germanic word for the number that follows eight. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic form that also produced the German neun and the Dutch negen, and beyond that to a shared Indo-European root that surfaces in the Latin novem and the Greek ennea. Linguists have long noticed how closely the word for nine resembles the word for 'new' in many of these languages, which has led to a curious theory that nine was once felt to be the 'new' number that began a fresh count after the old base of eight. The modern English spelling settled with a silent final 'e' that lengthens the vowel, a pattern shared with 'fine' and 'line'. Because it is such an old, high-frequency word, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable for over a thousand years.

How the word is built

• nine (single root word, from Old English nigon)