Other forms: nineties
Ninety is nine times ten. Ninety minutes, ninety per cent, ninety years of age.
A football match is ninety minutes, which is the number most people meet it in. Ninety degrees is a right angle, from the Babylonian circle of three hundred and sixty.
1nounninetyNine times ten.
“She lived to ninety and complained the whole way.”
ninety is a number.
Old English hundnigontig, from nine plus a form meaning ten.
Proto-Germanic
*newuntēhundą — ninety
Old English
hundniġontiġ
Middle English
nynty
English, today
ninety
From Middle English nynty, nynety, from Old English hundniġontiġ, from Proto-Germanic newuntēhundą (“ninety”), equivalent to nine + -ty. Cognate with Scots nynty, nynety (“ninety”), stq njuugentich (“ninety”), West Frisian njoggentich (“ninety”), Dutch negentig (“ninety”), German Low German negentig (“ninety”), German neunzig (“ninety”), Swedish nittio (“ninety”), Norwegian Bokmål nitti (“ninety”), Norwegian Nynorsk nitti (“ninety”), Icelandic níutíu (“ninety”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA