Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell thirty

hear itthir·ty/'θɜrti/nounLong vowels

What it means: The number after twenty-nine.

In a sentence: There are thirty candles on the birthday cake.

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as therty or thrity.

Same family: thirteen, third, thirty-one, thirty-five, thirtieth. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Thirty” comes from Old English “þrītig,” which literally meant “three tens.” The “-ty” ending in English number words like twenty, thirty, and forty originally meant “groups of ten.”

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