nine

American  

[nahyn] / naɪn /

noun

• nines
  plural

1. a cardinal number, eight plus one.

2. a symbol for this number, as 9 or IX.

3. a set of this many persons or things.

4. a baseball team.

5. a playing card with nine pips.

6. the Nine, the Muses.

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adjective

1. amounting to nine in number.

idioms

1. dressed to the nines, looking one's best; dressed smartly, splendidly, etc..

   All the girls were dressed to the nines for the party.

nine British  

/ naɪn /

noun

1. the cardinal number that is the sum of one and eight See also number

2. a numeral, 9, IX, etc, representing this number

3. something representing, represented by, or consisting of nine units, such as a playing card with nine symbols on it

4. Also: nine o'clock.  nine hours after noon or midnight

   the play starts at nine

5. informal elaborately dressed

6. (in Britain) the telephone number of the emergency services

7. normal office hours

   he works nine to five

   a nine-to-five job

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determiner

1. 1. amounting to nine

      nine days

   2. ( as pronoun )

      nine of the ten are ready

nine More Idioms  

1. see dressed to kill (to the nines); on cloud nine; possession is nine points of the law; whole nine yards.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• nines
  plural

Etymology

Origin of nine

before 900; Middle English; Old English nigan, nigon, cognate with Dutch negen, akin to German neun, Old Norse nīu, Gothic niun, Latin novem, Greek ennéa, Sanskrit náva

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

nine nines

He mowed down the Dodgers with 11 strikeouts, limiting them to just five hits in nine innings.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2026

“The first day of spring practice, we had nine kids,” he said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026

Last month, it lifted restrictions on the number of chips the company can buy for at least the next nine months.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026

As a devout Catholic, he has nine children, each of whom recently appeared in a YouTube series following his family’s road trip across America to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary.

From Salon ● Aug. 27, 2026

The phone rang nine times before my mother finally picked up.

From "Reaching for the Moon" by Katherine Johnson

"How many nines of reliability do you need to scale?"

From Barron's ● Jul. 22, 2026

He recalls the crowd in particular: “Everyone was dressed to the nines … it was an atmosphere I had never experienced before,” he says.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026

Four nines means 99.99% of uptime—a typical percentage that a software company commits to customers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 13, 2026

Alternatives have had try-outs during this camp, but recognised number nines in Dominic Solanke and Dominic Calvert-Lewin did not make their case strongly enough.

From BBC ● Mar. 31, 2026

“We’ll do the nines then,” I said, rummaging in my purse for a pen.

From "The Lions of Little Rock" by Kristin Levine