Thirteen

How to spell thirteen

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce thirteen

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does thirteen mean?

1. otherThe cardinal number equal to one more than twelve; 13.

Thirteen in a sentence

• The hotel had no floor numbered thirteen because of superstition.

• She turned thirteen the week before the school trip.

Where does thirteen come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This number word comes from the Old English threotiene, a compound of threo, meaning 'three', and the suffix -tiene, meaning 'ten more', so the whole formed 'three and ten'. The same Germanic pattern lies behind every English teen number, where -teen consistently signals an addition of ten. Over the centuries the cluster at the front shifted, with the 'r' and the vowel swapping places in a process linguists call metathesis, which is why we say and write 'thir' rather than 'three' at the start. The same shuffle gave us 'third' from 'three' and 'thirty' from the same root. That hidden link to 'three' is a useful memory hook, but the spelling trap is real: the word keeps the 'ir' of 'third', not the 'ree' of 'three'.

How the word is built

• thir- (variant of three)
• -teen (from Old English -tiene: ten more than)