ordinal numbers

Cultural  

1. Numbers that indicate the order or position of something in a group or set, such as first, second, or fifteenth. (Compare cardinal numbers.)

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Example Sentences

The assumption is that something of the essence of institutions, public or private, small or large, religious or not, can be distilled by crunching data and assembling lists with ordinal numbers.

From Washington Post • Jan. 24, 2023

A visitor alighting from a distant solar system might make befuddled inquiries regarding our planet’s conception of math, and ordinal numbers, and “losing.”

From Slate • Feb. 3, 2016

Word's stylistic preferences range from the irritating—the superscript "th" on ordinal numbers, the eagerness to forcibly indent any numbered list it detects—to the outright wrong.

From Slate • Apr. 11, 2012

All the ordinal numbers, except first, second, third, and the compounds of these, as twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third, are formed directly from the cardinal numbers by means of the termination th.

From The Grammar of English Grammars by Brown, Goold

The ordinal numbers should have no adverbial form: "firstly," "secondly," and the rest are words without meaning.

From Write It Right A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults by Bierce, Ambrose