twenty

American  

[twen-tee, twuhn-] / ˈtwɛn ti, ˈtwʌn- /

noun

twenties plural

1. a cardinal number, 10 times 2.

2. a symbol for this number, as 20 or XX.

3. a set of this many persons or things.

4. Informal. a twenty-dollar bill.

   Can you give me two tens for a twenty?

5. 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.

6. Slang. Also 20 location; ten-twenty.

   What’s your twenty?

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adjective

1. amounting to 20 in number.

twenty British  

/ ˈtwɛntɪ /

noun

1. the cardinal number that is the product of ten and two; a score See also number

2. a numeral, 20, XX, etc, representing this number

3. something representing, represented by, or consisting of 20 units

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determiner

1. 1. amounting to twenty

      twenty questions

   2. ( as pronoun )

      to order twenty

Etymology

Origin of twenty

First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English twēntig; cognate with Old Frisian tw(e)intich, Old High German zweinzug ( German zwanzig ), Gothic twai tigjus two tens

Example Sentences

“It’s Love Again,” a 1936 movie that also features Jessie Matthews, includes “headdresses that required twenty weeks’ labor to bejewel.”

From The Wall Street Journal • May 20, 2026

Eaten with a hunk of sourdough, it made me feel — at least for twenty blessed minutes — like things were right with the world.

From Salon • May 12, 2026

Some data-entry spreadsheet tasks, which Radclyffe said had taken up to two weeks to complete manually, were now achieved in twenty seconds.

From BBC • May 4, 2026

For Bastien Loiseau, a French-Polish filmmaker who has lived in Warsaw for the past twenty years, Poland's massive transformations are a part of daily life.

From Barron's • Feb. 3, 2026

Though it was twenty years since her death, these were still “Tante Jans’s rooms.”

From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom