Etimology
From Middle English ten, tene, from Old English tīen, from Proto-West Germanic *tehun, from Proto-Germanic *tehun, from Proto-Indo-European *déḱm̥. Cognate with Scots ten, tene (“ten”), West Frisian tsien (“ten”), Saterland Frisian tjoon (“ten”), North Frisian tiin (“ten”). See also teen.
numeral
ten
The number occurring after nine and before eleven, represented in Arabic numerals (base ten) as 10 and in Roman numerals as X.
Related words
related terms
tenth
noun
ten (countable and uncountable, plural tens)
A set or group with ten elements.
(in the plural) An inexact quantity, typically understood to be between 20 and 100.
(countable, card games) A card in a given suit with a value of ten.
(countable) A denomination of currency, such as a banknote, with a value of ten units.
(countable, US, slang) A perfect specimen, (particularly) a physically attractive person.
(countable, US, slang) A high level of intensity. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
(countable, rowing) The act of rowing ten strokes flat out.
Examples
We divided the chocolates into tens to hand out to Hallowe'en visitors.
Our houses are tens of meters apart, so we don't have to worry about noise from our neighbours.
tens of thousands of voters
Synonym: tenner
Can you give me two tens for this twenty?
Synonym: dime piece
I was in the Woodley Park–Zoo in D.C. and mom and sister were waiting to see the pandas, so me and my pops broke away to check out the monkey house. Well, there was a beautiful teacher, I mean we're talking a ten, she was blond, had a low-cut dress on, just gorgeous. And she has about eight or nine students and she's pointing out all the different monkeys. And me and my dad noticed this huge orangutan kind of fiddling with himself. And on close [censored] And we kept checking it out and he was looking directly at the teacher. Well, a couple minutes passed by [censored] he proceeds to [censored] that's when the teacher noticed and, you know, took the kids away very hurriedly. But I looked at my dad and said, you know, they're so much like us.
An Office Ten is a person who falls somewhere between average to mildly good-looking in the world at large but skyrockets to wildly attractive within the confines of an open-concept desk plan.
At the 1,000-metres post we gave a ten, which raised our lead to 1⅔ lengths; the Belgians were rowing hard, but one felt that they still had plenty of spurting power.
Morris gave a ten, and an unbelievable surge ran through the boat, one that I had never felt before.
Related words
coordinate terms
Previous: nine (9)
Next: eleven (11)
related terms
tenfold
tenth