Twelfth

How to spell twelfth

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce twelfth

What does twelfth mean?

1. adjectiveComing after the eleventh in a sequence; the ordinal form of twelve.

Twelfth in a sentence

• Her office is on the twelfth floor of the building.

• The festival continues until the twelfth of January.

Where does twelfth come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English ordinal twelfta, the adjective form of twelf, the number twelve. The number itself goes back to a Germanic compound that literally meant something like 'two left' (over ten), built from the roots that gave us 'two' and a verb meaning 'to leave', the idea being two remaining after you have counted past ten. The ordinal suffix -th, seen in 'fourth', 'fifth' and 'sixth', was added to mark position in a sequence. The tricky spelling comes from that buried 'f' from twelve sitting right before the 'th' cluster, so the word ends in the awkward, rarely written string of letters 'lfth'. Speakers naturally soften or drop that 'f' in speech, which is exactly why writers are tempted to leave it out on paper.

How the word is built

• twelf- (from Old English twelf 'twelve')
• -th (ordinal-number suffix)