sixty

American  

[siks-tee] / ˈsɪks ti /

noun

sixties plural

1. a cardinal number, ten times six.

2. a symbol for this number, as 60 or LX.

3. a set of this many persons or things.

4. sixties, the numbers, years, degrees, or the like, from 60 through 69, as in referring to numbered streets, indicating the years of a lifetime or of a century, or noting degrees of temperature.

   Her grandfather is in his late sixties. The temperature is in the low sixties.

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adjective

1. amounting to 60 in number.

idioms

1. like sixty, with great speed, ease, energy, or zest.

   Everyone was working like sixty to finish up before the holidays.

sixty British  

/ ˈsɪkstɪ /

noun

1. the cardinal number that is the product of ten and six See also number

2. a numeral, 60, LX, etc, representing sixty

3. something represented by, representing, or consisting of 60 units

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determiner

1. 1. amounting to sixty

      sixty soldiers

   2. ( as pronoun )

      sixty are dead

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• sixties
  plural

Etymology

Origin of sixty

before 900; Middle English (adj. and noun), Old English sixtig (adj.); cognate with Dutch zestig, German sechzig, Old Norse sextigir. See six, -ty ¹

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sixty sixties

Special chemicals called surfactants keep the water and diesel evenly blended, allowing the emulsion to remain stable for up to sixty days.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 13, 2026

The ground remains saturated and more than sixty flood warnings are in force even before this next batch of wet weather arrives, so further flooding is expected.

From BBC ● Feb. 2, 2026

"For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road," the statement said.

From Barron's ● Jan. 11, 2026

Mr. Gould quotes the music critic Lisa Robinson, who has suggested that “the CBGBs bands and the few music writers who loved them . . . may have consisted of about sixty people.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2025

So if it only has sixty knots in one centimeter of carpet, then you’d see that rug on the floor of a tea house in the bazaar, and you’d be welcome to step on it.

From "Everything Sad Is Untrue" by Daniel Nayeri

"Conserving electricity means preserving the nation's resources. We must not strain the electrical grid with unnecessary usage," said Abdulrahman Al-Azmi, a Kuwaiti man in his sixties.

From Barron's ● Jul. 21, 2026

The few dozen men, most in their sixties, were headed to Nagano's Lake Suwa in search of a phenomenon called "God's Crossing" that has gone from reliable to elusive in recent decades.

From Barron's ● Feb. 15, 2026

John: “We’ve had the swinging sixties, and I was wondering, Mrs. Lennon, how you saw your place in the seventies?”

From Salon ● Dec. 23, 2025

Dear Liz: My husband’s parents, who are 88 and 93, respectively, have decided to leave their house, worth $800,000, equally, to their three children, who are all in their sixties.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2025

Men in their forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies all took off their hats and headed inside—and so did I. We ate cucumber sandwiches and drank cups of tea.

From "Ugly" by Robert Hoge