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

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• twenties
  plural

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

See Examples For:

twenty twenties

Only a week ago, Korea announced that in the first twenty days of August alone exports had risen by 56% year over year to $55 billion.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 27, 2026

He told me how, as a boy, he watched Kadim being built for the first time, then watched again as the settlers there were forced out by the government twenty years later.

From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2026

See “something will turn up” and “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026

"For more than twenty years, a high-pulse-energy femtosecond laser on chip was widely regarded as a holy grail of integrated photonics," says Kippenberg.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2026

That should be worth more than twenty pounds of food.

From "Rump: The (Fairly) True Story of Rumpelstilskin" by Liesl Shurtliff

In England and Wales, temperatures will rise into the mid to high twenties Celsius and widely across east Wales, central, eastern and southern England in excess of 30C.

From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2026

And she noted that she has two children in their twenties who are struggling with housing costs and who oppose the project.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026

It will also become warmer in Scotland and Northern Ireland with temperatures reaching the mid to high twenties.

From BBC ● Jul. 25, 2026

"I think it's definitely shifting," said Nizier Lawrence, in his early twenties.

From Barron's ● Jul. 2, 2026

She had a way of making me feel like we were the same age, even though I was still in high school and she was a workingwoman in her twenties.

From "Americanized" by Sara Saedi