sixty

[ siks-tee ]

/ ˈsɪks ti /

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noun, plural six·ties.

a cardinal number, ten times six.

a symbol for this number, as 60 or LX.

a set of this many persons or things.

sixties, the numbers, years, degrees, or the like, from 60 through 69, as in referring to numbered streets, indicating the years of a lifetime or of a century, or noting degrees of temperature: Her grandfather is in his late sixties. The temperature is in the low sixties.

adjective

amounting to 60 in number.

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Idioms about sixty

like sixty, Informal. with great speed, ease, energy, or zest: Everyone was working like sixty to finish up before the holidays.

Origin of sixty

before 900; Middle English (adj. and noun), Old English sixtig (adj.); cognate with Dutch zestig,German sechzig,Old Norse sextigir.See six, -ty¹

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use sixty in a sentence

John Paul was youthful in his sixties with a radiant charisma.
How Pope Francis Became the World’s BFF|Jason Berry|December 21, 2014|DAILY BEAST
I struck up a conversation with a man in his fifties or sixties who had a Brooklyn accent.
I Ate Potato Pancakes Til I Plotzed|Emily Shire|December 17, 2014|DAILY BEAST
This was, after all, the Swinging Sixties in London and the country had moved on.
The Castration of Alan Turing, Britain’s Code-Breaking WWII Hero|Clive Irving|November 29, 2014|DAILY BEAST
“The Sixties—I had to have my foot in everything then,” he says.
The Stacks: The Eyes of Winter: Paul Newman at 70|Peter Richmond|October 11, 2014|DAILY BEAST

By the mid-1990s, Kinkade had become to the evangelical movement what Peter Max was to the psychedelic Sixties.
The Drunken Downfall of Evangelical America's Favorite Painter|Zac Bissonnette|June 8, 2014|DAILY BEAST
In the early sixties a cheap edition appeared, and cheap editions were rare things then.
Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland|Joseph Tatlow
That was "back in the Sixties," when his lapses were as far apart as they were unrivalled in consumption, span, and pyrotechny.
Ancestors|Gertrude Atherton
Early in the sixties he knew only a few numbers from Glinkas second opera, which pleased him unreservedly.
The Life & Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky|Modeste Tchaikovsky
Sternes period of literary activity falls in the sixties, the very heyday of British supremacy in Germany.
Laurence Sterne in Germany|Harvey Waterman Thayer
The ideals of peace and free trade preached and to some degree practiced in the fifties and sixties were passing under an eclipse.
The Canadian Dominion|Oscar D. Skelton

British Dictionary definitions for sixty

sixty

/ (ˈsɪkstɪ) /

noun plural -ties

the cardinal number that is the product of ten and sixSee also number (def. 1)

a numeral, 60, LX, etc, representing sixty

something represented by, representing, or consisting of 60 units

determiner

amounting to sixtysixty soldiers
(as pronoun)sixty are dead

Word Origin for sixty

Old English sixtig

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012