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thirteen

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

Thirteen is ten plus three, and a great many people will tell you it is unlucky.

The superstition is old and stubborn, and it has a name, triskaidekaphobia. Hotels skip the thirteenth floor, aircraft skip the row, and Friday the thirteenth has an entire film series to itself. Whether anybody genuinely believes it is another matter. The word has a useful opposite in the baker's dozen, which is thirteen and was said to be an extra loaf added so the baker could not be accused of short measure.

Definitions of thirteen

  1. 1nounthirteenThe number after twelve.A1

    “She turned thirteen in the spring.”

Where it comes from

Thirteen has swapped its letters round. Old English þrēotīene was simply three plus ten, and Middle English thrittene became thirteen by metathesis, the same shuffle that turned thritty into thirty.

  1. Proto-Germanic

    *þritehun

  2. Old English

    þrēotīene

  3. Middle English

    thirttene

  4. English, today

    thirteen

Built from

  • *þrīz · Proto-Germanic — three
  • *tehun · Proto-Germanic — teen

From Middle English thirttene, variant (through metathesis) of thrittene, from Old English þrēotīene, from Proto-Germanic þritehun, compound of þrīz (“three”) + tehun (“teen”). Cognate with West Frisian trettjin, Dutch dertien, German dreizehn, Danish tretten. Equivalent to three + -teen.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in School & Learning, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 30 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

thirteen in the wild

  • The thirteen desserts are the traditional dessert foods used to celebrate Christmas in the French region of Provence.

    Thirteen desserts

  • The desserts always number thirteen but the exact items vary by local or familial tradition.

    Thirteen desserts

  • Seventeenth Printing PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE Chess Fundamentals was first published thirteen years ago.

    Chess Fundamentals· José Raúl Capablanca

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.