“What time is it” “It's ten.” promised me that she would fix me up with a ten
Recent Examples on the WebFinding a dependable big may not be click bait, but probably makes the top-ten to do list. Ira Winderman, Sun Sentinel, 15 June 2022 No one under the age of ten appears to have died from the disease. Krista Langlois, Outside Online, 19 Mar. 2020 Having celebrated 10 years, what’s next for Novikov? Roll my sleeves up in readiness for the next ten! Angelina Villa-clarke, Forbes, 18 Jan. 2022 Also, this gives Sandra Bullock two films in the top-ten, alongside the 2018 sleeper smash Birdbox, making her Netflix’s biggest movie star. Scott Mendelson, Forbes, 29 Dec. 2021 This can be oversimplified and overstated, but the United States did attract immigrants by the tens of millions. Marilynne Robinson, The New York Review of Books, 27 May 2020 City attorneys for Los Angeles and San Francisco also joined the suit, which asks the court to fine Uber and Lyft $2,500 per each misclassified driver in California; that could add up to tens of millions of dollars in penalties for each company. Aarian Marshall, Wired, 5 May 2020 Think tens of thousands of people at a concert, conventions and crowded sports arenas. Julia Wick, Los Angeles Times, 29 Apr. 2020 Higher stock prices won’t offer much consolation to the tens of millions of people who have been laid off or furloughed. John Cassidy, The New Yorker, 28 Apr. 2020 See More
Word History
Etymology
Middle English, going back to Old English tīen (West Saxon), tēn, going back to Germanic *tehun (whence also Old Frisian tiān, tiēn "ten," Old Saxon tehan, Old High German zehan, Old Norse tíu, Gothic taihun), going back to Indo-European *deḱm̥, whence also Old Irish deich "ten," Welsh deg, Latin decem, Old Church Slavic desętĭ, Lithuanian dẽšimt, Albanian dhjetë, Greek déka, Armenian tasn, Tocharian A śäk, Tocharian B śak, Avestan dasa, Sanskrit daśa
Note: The Slavic, Baltic, and perhaps Albanian forms are derived from the ordinal base *deḱm̥-t-.
First Known Use
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Time Traveler
The first known use of ten was before the 12th century