forty
forty Lexical Profile
forty Game Scores & Validity
• adjective
Amounting to four times ten in number; one more than thirty-nine.
"The historic library houses over forty rare manuscripts from the sixteenth century."
• noun
The cardinal number equivalent to the product of four and ten; one more than thirty-nine (40).
"She celebrated turning forty with a quiet dinner among close friends."
The numbers from forty to forty-nine, especially used to refer to the years of a century or the years of a person's life (used in the plural).
"Many people achieve their greatest professional stability during their forties."
Word Nuance & Usage
Unlike 'four' and 'fourteen', 'forty' is spelled without a 'u'; writing 'fourty' is a common spelling error in modern English.
• Rhymes for forty
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
From Old English feowertig, a compound of feower ('four') and -tig ('group of ten'), of Proto-Germanic origin.