twenty

UK/ˈtwɛnti/US/ˈtwɛnti/ [-ɛɾ̃i]

nounA1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — two sits at #38neutral

Other forms: twenties

Twenty is two times ten. The point where English counting settles into a pattern.

Everything below it has its own name, and everything above follows a rule, which is why children learn to count to twenty first. A score is an old word for twenty and survives in the famous opening four score and seven years ago. Britain counted money in twenty shillings to the pound until 1971. Twenty-twenty vision means perfect eyesight, and it is a measurement rather than a metaphor.

Definitions of twenty

1nountwentyThe number equal to two times ten.A1
“There were about twenty people waiting.”

Where it comes from

Proto-Germanic
*twaintigiwiz
Old English
twēntiġ — twenty
Middle English
twenty
English, today
twenty

From Middle English twenty, twenti, from Old English twēntiġ (“twenty”) literally “two tens”, from Proto-Germanic twaintigiwiz, twai tigiwiz, an old compound of twain- + -tigaz, equivalent to two + -ty, or twain + -ty. Cognate with Scots twenty, tuenty (“twenty”), West Frisian tweintich (“twenty”), Dutch twintig (“twenty”), German zwanzig (“twenty”), Danish tyve.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in School & Learning, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

twenty in the wild

A group of twenty units is sometimes referred to as a score.
20 (number)
The twenty-foot equivalent unit (abbreviated TEU or teu) is a general unit of cargo capacity, often used for container ships and container ports.
Twenty-foot equivalent unit
In a Twenty20 game, the two teams have a single innings each, which is restricted to a maximum of twenty overs.
Twenty20
Then he turned on Syme a face transfigured to that of a fiend, and began to fight as if with twenty weapons.
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare· G. K. Chesterton
Beth Danson was about twenty-five and, besides her deep auburn-brown hair and lovely face, she boasted an equally attractive body.
The Sex Life of the Gods· M. E. Knerr

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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.

Related words

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