twelfty
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
1
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
num
One hundred and twenty; 120.
Example Sentences
- "Thirty-six from a hundred and twenty-nine? [twelvety-nine.]"
- "The twelfty-six [126] weeks' strike taught us the value of being organized"
Etymology
From twelve + -ty, from Old English hundtwelftiġ. Compare hundseofontiġ, hundeahtatig, hundniġontiġ and hundtēontiġ for modern seventy, eighty, ninety and one hundred, reflecting the old Germanic hybrid base-ten and base-twelve numbering system. This hund was used for counting higher decades, and eventually became the root of hundred. Hund originally meant 120 (now called a long hundred or great hundred, and preserved in the term hundredweight), but was used to translate multiples of Latin centum (“100”), and eventually picked up that value when used in isolation as well.
Origin
- Source language: Old English