Tens

How to spell tens

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tens

What does tens mean?

1. nounMore than one group of ten, or the column of digits standing for multiples of ten in a number.

Tens in a sentence

• The cashier counted the cash in tens and twenties.

• In the number forty-three, the four sits in the tens column.

Where does tens come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is simply the plural of 'ten', and 'ten' comes from the Old English 'tien' or 'ten', meaning the number after nine. That word grew out of the Proto-Germanic 'tehun', which is the ancestor shared with the Dutch 'tien' and the German 'zehn'. The deeper root reaches back to the Proto-Indo-European 'dekm', the same source that gave Latin 'decem' and Greek 'deka', both also meaning ten and visible today in words like 'decimal' and 'decade'. The plural form 'tens' has long been used both for several lots of ten and for the column of digits between the units and the hundreds. The spelling stays plain and short, so the real trap is resisting the urge to add a final 'e' and write the unrelated word 'tense'.

How the word is built

• ten (from Old English ten, the number)
• -s (plural marker)