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twenty-one

twenty-one

9 1.0
A number that comes after twenty
  • numeral
  • /ˈtwɛntiˌwʌn/
translation icon : veintiuno
  • I turned twenty-one last month, and my friends threw me a big birthday party.
  • age twenty-one
  • twenty-one years
  • twenty-one years old

Examples

  • Time ran fast, and I turned twenty-one in the spring semester of my senior year.

    Fiction book (1997)
  • In 1939, when I was twenty-one, my father and I made our first and only trip together.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • I guess when I was twenty-one, I could do both at the same time with my parents.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • When Dorothy turned twenty-one, she had two babies of her own, a girl and a boy.

    Fiction book (1990)
  • Ridyard, it seems, never missed a voyage in all his twenty-one years at sea.

    Academic text (1998)
  • At this point, Georgie was twenty-one and Van was all of nineteen.

    Academic text (2001)
  • Yvette's cousin, Kit, is a twenty-one-year-old Columbia University student who is about to graduate this spring.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • Sandy gave Gordie another present, a high-quality fake driver's license, making him twenty-one overnight.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • There were forty-five three-person groups in all: twenty-four collaborative groups and twenty-one nominal groups.

    Academic text (1997)
  • At twenty-one, many people look forward to celebrating their legal drinking age.

Synonyms

21
vstwenty-one
928 1.0

The number after twenty and before twenty-two

is the written word form rather than digits
XXI
vstwenty-one
1 4.7

A Roman numeral for twenty-one

is the written word form rather than a numeral system

How Many

one hundred
194 1.0
fifty
876 1.0
twenty-one
9 1.0
ten
1.0
five
1.0
one
1.0

Surface Forms

twenty-one cardinal word
21 cardinal digit

Morphology

twenty-one = twenty + one (transparent) = twenty + one

A straightforward compound numeral formed from 'twenty' + 'one'; meaning is directly compositional.

Etymology

Twenty-one as a number is simply made from twenty and one, so it means 'one more than twenty' or 'two tens and one', which explains why it names the number 21.