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cardinal numbers

Cultural  
  1. Numbers that indicate the quantity of things in a group or set, but not the order or arrangement of those things. One, two, and one thousand are cardinal numbers. (Compare ordinal numbers.)


Example Sentences

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For example, in addition to the cardinal numbers described here, many other infinite cardinalities lying between ℵ1 and the continuum have been discovered since the 1940s.

From Scientific American • Aug. 16, 2021

After we have these notions, the size of sets is denoted by cardinal numbers, or cardinals.

From Scientific American • Aug. 16, 2021

Rather our result proves that there are mathematical universes in which the 10 specific cardinal numbers between ℵ1 and 2ℵ0 turn out to be different.

From Scientific American • Aug. 16, 2021

In fact, the size of the set of real numbers can vary greatly: there could be eight, 27 or infinitely many cardinal numbers between ℵ1 and 2ℵ0—even uncountably many.

From Scientific American • Aug. 16, 2021

Chapters in books are usually given the cardinal numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on.

From "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon