twenty
- a cardinal number, 10 times 2.
- a symbol for this number, as 20 or XX.
- a set of this many persons or things.
- Informal. a twenty-dollar bill: Can you give me two tens for a twenty?
- twenties, the numbers, years, degrees, or the like, from 20 through 29, as in referring to numbered streets, indicating the years of a lifetime or of a century, or referring to degrees of temperature: He lives in the West Twenties. She's in her early twenties. The temperature must be in the high twenties today.
- amounting to 20 in number.
Origin of twenty
Examples from the Web for twenties
Contemporary Examples
An Australian woman in her late twenties told me she was an “honorary Jew” with no actual Jewish heritage.
“It really sucks to be in your younger twenties,” Colfer told Esquire.
Chris Colfer on Writing, Acting, and the Pain of Being A Pop Culture TrailblazerOliver Jones
December 15, 2014
When I was in the closet in my twenties, I considered suicide almost every day.
He once told me that he only vaguely understood “the mechanical aspects of sex” until he was in his early twenties.
We were all young—in our twenties—and felt honored to be having dinner with Cosby.
Historical Examples
Then we pass to the twenties (the second ten), and so on, from ten to ten.
Dr. Montessori's Own HandbookMaria Montessori
From Forty-fourth Street to the Twenties was as familiar a path as any in his life.
The Wall Street GirlFrederick Orin Bartlett
And it dawned on him that his twenties were slipping by and that he was becoming unsociable and grave.
The Forbidden TrailHonor Willsie
Naturally, inevitably the Boston of my early twenties had vanished.
A Daughter of the Middle BorderHamlin Garland
Up to this time they have been putting out tens and twenties.
Frank Merriwell's BraveryBurt L. Standish
twenty
- the cardinal number that is the product of ten and two; a scoreSee also number (def. 1)
- a numeral, 20, XX, etc, representing this number
- something representing, represented by, or consisting of 20 units
- amounting to twentytwenty questions
- (as pronoun)to order twenty
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for twenties
n.
1829 as the years of someone's life between 20 and 29; 1830 as a decade of years in a given century. See twenty.
twenty
n.
Old English twentig "group of twenty," from twegen "two" (see two) + -tig "group of ten" (see -ty (1)). Cognate with Old Frisian twintich, Dutch twintig, Old High German zweinzug, German zwanzig. Gothic twai tigjus is even more transparent: literally "two tens."
The card game twenty-one (1790) is from French vingt-et-un (1781). Twenty-twenty hindsight is first recorded 1962, a figurative use of the Snellen fraction for normal visual acuity, expressed in feet. The guessing game of twenty questions is recorded from 1786. The Twentieth Century Limited was an express train from New York to Chicago 1902-1967.