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twentieth

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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English numbers (edit)
200
 ←  10  ←  19 20 21  →  30  → 
2
    Cardinal: twenty
    Ordinal: twentieth
    Abbreviated ordinal: 20th
    Adverbial: twenty times
    Multiplier: twentyfold
    Germanic collective: score
    Greek collective prefix: icosa-, icosi-
    Latinate collective prefix: viginti-
    Fractional: twentieth

Etymology

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From earlier twenteth, twentith, from Middle English twentithe, twentiþe, from Old English twēntigoþa. Equivalent to twenty +‎ -eth.

Etymological notes

twentith, twenteth is the expected development from Middle English twentithe, but in time, the opaque twent- was replaced by a more transparent twenty-, resulting in modern twentieth (in the speech varieties this occurred in, the weak vowel in the final syllable of twenteth, twentith was clearly distinct from that in twenty); similar processes explain the modern pronunciation of thirtieth, fourtieth, etc. This analogy was assisted by synizetic pronunciations of words such as carrying, which allowed twenteth, twentith to be interpreted as contractions of twentieth.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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twentieth (not comparable)

  1. The ordinal form of the number twenty.
    • 1980, Christopher C. Rand, “Introduction”, in The Wilderness (Yüan-yeh) 原野‎[1], →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page viii:
      As with most twentieth-century Chinese writers, little is known of Ts’ao Yü’s life. Though his ancestral home was Ch’ien-chiang 潛江, Hupei province, he himself was probably born in Tientsin in either 1909 or 1910.
    • 2000, Bill Manhire, Doubtful Sounds: Essays and Interviews, page 124:
      The novel he lends his name to is an account of that life, taking more or less the form of a memoir set down in the years immediately after World War II by an old man mentally preparing for death, not quite at home in the twentieth century (and a little proud of it, stubbornly clinging to his eartrumpet), whose significant memories reach back to the early 1890s and beyond.
    • 2021 March 15, Jessie Yeung, “These Asian countries are giving dual citizens an ultimatum on nationality – and loyalty”, in CNN‎[2], archived from the original on 15 March 2023:
      “A shift from jus soli to jus sanguinis has been witnessed in Asia in the course of the twentieth century,” wrote Olivier Vonk at the Maastricht Centre in a 2017 paper.
    • 2024 September 30, Michael Doran, “EXCEPTIONALISM AND ASSIMILATIONISM IN FEDERAL INDIAN LAW”, in Stanford Law School‎[3], volume 20, number 2, page 268‎[4], archived from the original on 24 February 2025:
      But in fact the antinomy of exceptionalism and assimilationism has been there all along, and otherwise puzzling decisions from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries become readily understandable when seen as moments when assimilationism was ascendant.

Abbreviations

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  • 20th, 20th; (in names of monarchs and popes) XX

Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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twentieth (plural twentieths)

  1. A person or thing in the twentieth position.
  2. One of twenty equal parts of a whole.
    • 2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Chester (1848)”, in Rail, number 947, page 57:
      There are some glittering stats out there regarding Brassey: namely that he'd built around one-third of Britain's railways by the time he was in his early 40s, and that by the time of his death (aged 65) he was responsible for around one-twentieth of the world's railways.

Translations

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References

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Middle English

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Adjective

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twentieth

  1. alternative form of twentithe
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