TWENTIETH

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does twentieth mean? 

• TWENTIETH (noun)
  The noun TWENTIETH has 1 sense:

1. position 20 in a countable series of things

  Familiarity information: TWENTIETH used as a noun is very rare.

• TWENTIETH (adjective)
  The adjective TWENTIETH has 1 sense:

1. coming next after the nineteenth in position

  Familiarity information: TWENTIETH used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TWENTIETH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Position 20 in a countable series of things

Classified under:

Nouns denoting relations between people or things or ideas

Hypernyms ("twentieth" is a kind of...):

rank (relative status)

• TWENTIETH (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Coming next after the nineteenth in position

Synonyms:

20th; twentieth

Similar:

ordinal (being or denoting a numerical order in a series)

 Context examples 

“Never, never!” she cried with a most open eagerness—“Never, for the twentieth part of a moment, did such an idea occur to me.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

As for Ben Gunn, he got a thousand pounds, which he spent or lost in three weeks, or to be more exact, in nineteen days, for he was back begging on the twentieth.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Had we taken nineteen vessels, we should never have said it was well done while the twentieth sailed the seas.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“It was for that very reason that my father willed that I should come forth into the world at my twentieth year,” said Alleyne.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It is absolutely unique, and its value can only be conjectured, but the reward offered of £ 1000 is certainly not within a twentieth part of the market price.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were, that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted, when the intelligence of his death abroad had worked its way to Uppercross, two years before.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

And while Arthur took up the tale, for the twentieth time, of his adventure with the drunken hoodlums on the ferry-boat and of how Martin Eden had rushed in and rescued him, that individual, with frowning brows, meditated upon the fool he had made of himself, and wrestled more determinedly with the problem of how he should conduct himself toward these people.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

His honest black face, and the immense view before us, which carried us half-way back to the affluent of the Amazon, helped us to remember that we really were upon this earth in the twentieth century, and had not by some magic been conveyed to some raw planet in its earliest and wildest state.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A potentially life-threatening pregnancy-related disorder characterized by tonic-clonic seizures in association with hypertension after the twentieth week of gestation and up to six weeks postpartum and in the absence of other potential causes of seizures.

(Eclampsia, NCI Thesaurus)

I had it, together with this piece of the true rood, from the five-and-twentieth descendant of Joseph of Arimathea, who still lives in Jerusalem alive and well, though latterly much afflicted by boils.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)