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.
adjective
amounting to 20 in number.
Origin of twenty
before 900;Middle English;Old Englishtwēntig; cognate with Old Frisiantw(e)intich,Old High Germanzweinzug (Germanzwanzig), Gothictwai tigjus two tens
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.
