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Nineteenth

adjectiveComing after the eighteenth and before the twentieth in a sequence; the ordinal form of nineteen.

How to spell nineteenth

nineteenth

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nineteenth

American pronunciation
NYNE-TEENTH
/ˈnaɪnˈtinθ/

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What does nineteenth mean?

  1. adjectiveComing after the eighteenth and before the twentieth in a sequence; the ordinal form of nineteen.

Nineteenth in a sentence

Voice

Where does nineteenth come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English number word, descended from the Old English nigontēoþa, which combined nigontīene 'nineteen' (literally 'nine and ten') with the ordinal ending -tha. The first element traces back to the Old English nigon 'nine', a relative of the German neun and Latin novem, while -teen is simply the worn-down form of ten. The ordinal suffix -th is the same one seen in fourth, sixth, and tenth, and it has marked 'position in a sequence' since the earliest English. Spelling trouble usually comes from the cluster of letters at the join: the 'teen' keeps its double e, and the 'th' must follow the full 'nineteen' rather than collapsing into a shorter form. Because the word is built so transparently from nine and teen, anyone who can spell those two pieces already holds the key to the whole.

How the word is built

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