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• fifteen
  fifteen

  noun

  a cardinal number, ten plus five.
• Fifteen
  Fifteen

  noun

  history the Jacobite rising of 1715

fifteen

American  

[fif-teen] / ˈfɪfˈtin /

noun

• fifteens
  plural

1. a cardinal number, ten plus five.

2. a symbol for this number, as 15 or XV.

3. a set of this many persons or things.

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adjective

1. amounting to 15 in number.

fifteen ¹ British  

/ ˈfɪfˈtiːn /

noun

1. the cardinal number that is the sum of ten and five

2. a numeral, 15, XV, etc, representing this number

3. something represented by, representing, or consisting of 15 units

4. a rugby union football team

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determiner

1. 1. amounting to fifteen

      fifteen jokes

   2. ( as pronoun )

      fifteen of us danced

Fifteen ² British  

/ ˈfɪfˈtiːn /

noun

1. history the Jacobite rising of 1715

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Usage

Spelling tips for fifteen The word fifteen is hard to spell because it doesn’t simply combine the spelling of the base number, five, with the suffix -teen, as is done in other easy-to-remember spellings like fourteen and sixteen.  How to spell fifteen: When five is combined with suffixes, the ve is turned into an f: fifteen (not fiveteen), fifty (not fivety), and fifth (not fiveth). Remember: there’s no v in fifteen.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• fifteens
  plural

Etymology

Origin of fifteen

before 900; Middle English, Old English fiftene. See five, -teen

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

fifteen Fifteen fifteens

It bears heavy signs of use and was made by Fuhrer Frères of Gstaad, the same Swiss firm that supplied fifteen axes to the 1924 Everest expedition.

From BBC ● Jul. 12, 2026

"For a medium-sized company, that means an additional two million euros in charges per year over fifteen years," Theuringer said.

From Barron's ● Jul. 2, 2026

“How to save the world in fifteen easy steps,” read one headline the day it was published.

From Salon ● Jun. 26, 2026

A reading below 4% generally triggers a sell signal and it’s worth noting that the median market decline, following the 24 sell signals observed in the last fifteen years, is -1%.

From MarketWatch ● May 19, 2026

He’s fifteen and prefers groaning to actual human words.

From "South of Somewhere" by Kalena Miller

Fifteen of 24 studies of academic achievement—62%—reported positive outcomes for home-school students compared with institutionally schooled students.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 2, 2026

Fifteen out of 18 industries reported price increases.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 1, 2026

Fifteen years after Marc Andreessen famously declared that “software is eating the world,” his venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is making a big bet on hardware.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026

Fifteen years earlier, he had opened the great aqueduct that carried Sierra snowmelt to the San Fernando Valley and made the metropolis possible.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026

Fifteen years after Independence, in 1975, a group of Senators called the Church Committee took it upon themselves to look into the secret operations that had been brought to bear on the Congo.

From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver

As she switched into fifteens from sevens, her lack of power and confidence in contact was exposed.

From BBC ● Apr. 15, 2026

When he threw parties for his three daughters—sweet fifteens, then engagements—social columnists came to write about the movers and shakers in attendance.

From Slate ● Jul. 14, 2016

The rise of sevens can have a knock-on effect, particularly in China where funding for fifteens has suffered.

From The Guardian ● Mar. 22, 2013

Average lease length is seven years, but there are a lot of fives and fifteens.

From New York Times ● Oct. 2, 2012

Lina was a couple of years older than Elsa, Lourdes, Sinita, and me; but her last year at Inmaculada, we were all in the same dormitory hall of the fifteens through seventeens.

From "In the Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez