Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The cardinal number equal to 4 × 10.
- noun A decade or the numbers from 40 to 49.
- noun The decade from 40 to 49 in a century.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Four times ten; ten more than thirty, or one more than thirty-nine: a cardinal numeral.
- The sum of four tens, or of thirty-nine and one.
- A symbol representing this number, as 40, XL, or xl.
- The name (with qualifying terms) of two appellate civil tribunals and a criminal court in the Venetian republic.
- A collective designation of the members of the French Academy, forty in number. Also called
the Forty Immortals .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Four times ten; thirty-nine and one more.
- noun The sum of four tens; forty units or objects.
- noun A symbol expressing forty units; as, 40, or xl.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun cardinal The
cardinal number occurring afterthirty-nine and beforeforty-one . - noun slang A 40
ounce bottle ofbeer .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective being ten more than thirty
- noun the cardinal number that is the product of ten and four
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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"Mr. Brewer of the Crown inn, Nothingham, undertook for a wager of forty guineas to go with a mare belonging to him in a cart, to Newark and back again, being a distance of _forty miles, in four hours_.
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Early Park, in the parish of B Bird, had been his residence since he first came to the title forty years ago, and had been the scene of all his labours.
The Prime Minister 1876
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Early Park, in the parish of Bird, had been his residence since he first came to the title forty years ago, and had been the scene of all his labours.
The Prime Minister Anthony Trollope 1848
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The "old Earl" was his grandfather, Edward Stanley, who had held the title forty-two years, and died in 1776, at the age of eighty-seven.
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Nobody disputes the fact that the tax base of the USA in forty years 'time will be large enough to pay for retirement benefits.
IRA's to the Rescue?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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When the Senate rejected him 55 – 45, it was the first such instance in forty years.
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This short book is arranged in forty second-person point-of-view chapters, each one a new thought experiment on what the afterlife might be like.
REVIEW: Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman 2009
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Once in forty-seven years someone actually holds the guy to account, and he fails miserably.
The Volokh Conspiracy » House Democratic Leaders Drop “Deem and Pass” 2010
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Last year was The New Complete Works of Josephus, which I'm glad I read, though I don't think anyone else joined us for that one, since reading all of that in forty days is simply impossible for anyone with, you know, a life.
Archive 2009-01-01 2009
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Last year was The New Complete Works of Josephus, which I'm glad I read, though I don't think anyone else joined us for that one, since reading all of that in forty days is simply impossible for anyone with, you know, a life.
mollusque commented on the word forty
The only alphaliteral number in English. German has eins and acht; French has deux, cinq, and dix. What about other languages?
July 16, 2010