seventeen

UK/ˈsɛv.ən.tiːn/US/ˈsɛv.ən.tiːn/

nounA1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Seventeen is the number that comes after sixteen. At seventeen, page seventeen, seventeen years old.

It is a prime number and cannot be divided by anything but itself and one. Seventeen is when a British teenager may start learning to drive, which is most of what the number means to them.

Definitions of seventeen

1nounseventeenThe number that comes after sixteen.A1
“There were seventeen of them and sixteen chairs.”

seventeen is a number.

Where it comes from

Old English seofontiene, seven plus ten, related to the German siebzehn.

Proto-Germanic
*sebuntehun
Old English
seofontīene
Middle English
seventene
English, today
seventeen

Middle English seventene, from Old English seofontīene, from Proto-Germanic sebuntehun. Cognate with Dutch zeventien, West Frisian santjin, German siebzehn, Danish sytten. Equivalent to seven + teen

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

← Vocabulary

seventeen

UK/ˈsɛv.ən.tiːn/US/ˈsɛv.ən.tiːn/

nounA1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Seventeen is the number that comes after sixteen. At seventeen, page seventeen, seventeen years old.

It is a prime number and cannot be divided by anything but itself and one. Seventeen is when a British teenager may start learning to drive, which is most of what the number means to them.

Definitions of seventeen

1nounseventeenThe number that comes after sixteen.A1
“There were seventeen of them and sixteen chairs.”

seventeen is a number.

Where it comes from

Old English seofontiene, seven plus ten, related to the German siebzehn.

Proto-Germanic
*sebuntehun
Old English
seofontīene
Middle English
seventene
English, today
seventeen

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA