Showing Results for "ordinal numbers"

See Also:

• plural of ordinal number.

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

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

In this sense the cases, numbers, and genders of nouns, the persons, moods, and tenses of verbs, the ordinal numbers, the diminutives, and even the compound words, are alike matters of derivation.

From A Handbook of the English Language by Latham, R. G. (Robert Gordon)