Definition of TEN

Examples of ten in a Sentence

“What time is it” “It's ten.” promised me that she would fix me up with a ten

Recent Examples on the Web The plaintiffs might have to eat those legal costs — sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, to get something that’s supposed to be free. — Kyle Whitmire, al, "Whitmire: When open carry smacks into closed government," 14 Feb. 2020 After all, there were likely tens of thousands of voters who cast ballots in the Republican primary in 2016 who voted in this year’s Democratic primary. — Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, "The Democratic Race After New Hampshire," 12 Feb. 2020 The town has renovated tens of bomb shelters, installing Wi-Fi to entertain easily bored millennials and air conditioners to make conflict more bearable. — NBC News, "Israeli town knows conflict with Iran-linked militants, hopes more is not to come," 9 Jan. 2020 The issue is that there are likely tens of thousands of more people within that 80,700 who are eligible but were not told. — Josh Kovner, courant.com, "Utility shut-offs in Connecticut have more than doubled. Advocates say low-income families are being kept in the dark about how to prevent them," 28 Oct. 2019 Sticker shock is the natural reaction to the tens of thousands of dollars that many colleges demand for each year spent on campus. — Robert Verbruggen, National Review, "Myths of Student-Loan Debt," 11 July 2019 The new coronavirus raging through Asia has killed hundreds of people and infected tens of thousands, most of them in Wuhan, China, the city where the outbreak is believed to have originated. — oregonlive, "Oregon coronavirus scare is a false alarm, health department says," 7 Feb. 2020 And then there are the tens of thousands who, overnight, found their lives upended and dreams dashed by the stroke of a presidential pen. — Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, "Trump scapegoats almost a quarter of Africa’s population," 5 Feb. 2020 These places include ‘culturally modified’ trees that have been altered for traditional uses, as well as rock art and engravings, stone-tool sites and grinding stones, some of which may be tens of thousands of years old. — John Pickrell, Scientific American, "Thousands of Ancient Aboriginal Sites Probably Damaged in Australian Fires," 27 Jan. 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'ten.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

History and Etymology for ten

Middle English, going back to Old English tīen (West Saxon), tēn, going back to Germanic *tehun (whence also Old Frisian tiān, tiēn "ten," Old Saxon tehan, Old High German zehan, Old Norse tíu, Gothic taihun), going back to Indo-European *deḱm̥, whence also Old Irish deich "ten," Welsh deg, Latin decem, Old Church Slavic desętĭ, Lithuanian dẽšimt, Albanian dhjetë, Greek déka, Armenian tasn, Tocharian A śäk, Tocharian B śak, Avestan dasa, Sanskrit daśa

Note: The Slavic, Baltic, and perhaps Albanian forms are derived from the ordinal base *deḱm̥-t-.

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