Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell twelve

hear ittwelve/twɛlv/determinerLong vowels

What it means: Being one more than eleven.

In a sentence: There are twelve eggs in the carton.

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as twelv or tweleve.

Same family: twelfth, dozen, eleven, thirteen. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Twelve” comes from Old English “twelf,” which originally meant something like “two left over” after counting to ten. Many cultures used groups of twelve, which is why we still have twelve months in a year and twelve hours on a clock face.

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