Twentieth

How to spell twentieth

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce twentieth

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does twentieth mean?

1. otherComing after the nineteenth in a sequence; the ordinal form of twenty.

Twentieth in a sentence

• Her twentieth birthday party was held at the lake house.

• The twentieth century saw two world wars and rapid technological change.

Where does twentieth come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends straight from Old English, where the cardinal number twenty appeared as twentig, literally 'two tens', built from twa 'two' and the suffix -tig meaning 'a group of ten'. The matching ordinal was twentigoða, formed with the old -tha ending that English still uses to make ordinals like fourth, sixth and tenth. Over the centuries the spelling settled into the modern shape, in which the final y of twenty softens to an i before the suffix, giving the tricky -ieth cluster. That same y-to-i shift happens across the whole family of higher ordinals: thirtieth, fortieth and ninetieth all behave the same way, so learning one pattern carries to all of them. The four-vowel run i-e-t-h is exactly where writers stumble, since the ear hears a quick unstressed ending that the spelling does not match.

How the word is built

• twenti- (from twenty, the cardinal number)
• -eth (ordinal suffix, with y changing to i)