ten point
- noun
- Obama led by six to ten points in earlier CBS/Times/Quinnipiac polls.
- a ten point scale
Examples
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If you answer all the questions correctly, you will receive ten points on the test.
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Participants received one lottery ticket for each ten points they earned.
Academic text (2005) -
I get ten points for trying.
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World Peace scored all ten points in the first four minutes of the game.
Blog text (20) -
Previous winners get ten points.
Fiction book (2001) -
Scores on the revised version are lower, with a mean difference of ten points.
Academic text (1991) -
That's worth at least ten points.
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Herb, you got ten points.
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With just over a month to go before the election the president is trailing his opponent by ten points.
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On Election Day, he lost by nearly ten points to Democrat Rick Nolan.
Blog text (30)
Synonyms
A group of items equal to the number after nine and before eleven
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a score of ten' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'ten' (the number 10) with 'point' (a scoring unit). This number+unit composition is cross-linguistically common and follows standard usage in scoring, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Ten point comes from scoring systems where judges gave numbers from zero to ten. If a judge held up ten as the highest point, it showed the best result, so ten point means 'a score of ten' or the 'top score'.