How to spell sixteenth

hear itsix·teenth/'sɪks'tinθ/adjectiveSilent and tricky

What it means: The ordinal number after fifteenth.

In a sentence: Jane will be celebrating her sixteenth birthday next month.

The part people get wrong

Watch for double e. Often misspelled as sixteeth or sixteenthh.

Same family: sixteen, sixth, sixteenth-century, six-fold. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Sixteenth” comes from Old English roots: “six” plus the ordinal-forming suffix “-teenth,” related to “ten.” It literally means “the tenth after six,” which is why it’s used both for order (the sixteenth item) and for the fraction 1/16.

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Words like this

fifteenth · wrath · wreath · thistle · eighth · tenth · themselves · beneath

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