Tenth Meaning
/tɛnθ/Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
adjThe ordinal numeral form of ten; next in order after that which is ninth.
adjBeing one of ten equal parts of a whole.
Sentence Examples
School begins on April the tenth.
The general use of forks for eating started in the tenth century A.D.
This song comes down to us from the tenth century.
CEFR Practice Quiz
This is the ____ time she has won the award, making it a double-digit achievement.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
He was delighted to finish in ____ place in the national marathon, considering there were several thousand runners today.
Word Origin & History
From 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).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"My dear young lady, here I am for the tenth time."
— a. 1776, Joseph Baretti, “Dialogue the Fortieth”, in Easy Phraseology for the Use of Those Persons Who Intend to Learn the Colloquial Part of the Italian Language, 1835 edition, Turin: Joseph Bocca, page 221:
"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 captivity."
— 1859, Charles Dickens, “The Substance of the Shadow”, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book III (The Track of a Storm), page 214:
"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 living conditions."
— 2025 August 1, Jamie Guirola, “'Alligator Alcatraz' detainees on hunger strike for 10th day, protesting conditions”, in NBC News, archived from the original on 08 Aug 2025:
"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."
— 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 45:11:
"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 measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month."
— 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:
Explore More A1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
This is the ____ time she has won the award, making it a double-digit achievement.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
He was delighted to finish in ____ place in the national marathon, considering there were several thousand runners today.