/tɛnθ/, [tʰɛn̪θ], /tɪnθ/
OriginFrom Middle English tenth, tenthe. Old English had tēoþa (origin of Modern English tithe), but the force of analogy to the cardinal number "ten" caused Middle English speakers to recreate the regular ordinal and re-insert the nasal consonant. Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *tehundô. Equivalent to ten (numeral) + -th (suffix forming ordinals).
- not-comparableThe ordinal numeral form of ten; next in order after that which is ninth.
“My dear young lady, here I am for the tenth time.”
“These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I write with difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney, mixed with blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my captiv”
“A hunger strike at a South Florida immigration detention center state officials have named “Alligator Alcatraz” has entered its tenth day, as detainees protest what they call inhumane and dangerous li”
- not-comparableBeing one of ten equal parts of a whole.
“The Ephah and the Bath shal be of one measure, that the Bath may containe the tenth part of an Homer, and the Ephah the tenth part of an Homer: the measure thereof shall be after the Homer.”
- The person or thing coming next after the ninth in a series; that which is in the tenth position.
- One of ten equal parts of a whole.
“Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measu”
- The interval between any tone and the tone represented on the tenth degree of the staff above it, as between one of the scale and three of the octave above; the octave of the third.
- UK, historical, in-pluralA temporary aid issuing out of personal property, and granted to the king by Parliament; formerly, the real tenth part of all the movables belonging to the subject.
- A tenth of a mil; a ten-thousandth of an inch.
- To divide by ten, into tenths.
“A regular cistern may be inched or tenthed by the rule given for inching or tenthing the back, copper, or cooler, which inching or tenthing should be entered in a table book for use.”
Formstenths(plural) · tenths(present, singular, third-person) · tenthing(participle, present) · tenthed(participle, past) · tenthed(past)