eighth

Pluraleighths

Formseighths, eighthing, eighthed

1. 1
   adjective

   The ordinal form matching the cardinal number eight; coming after the seventh in a sequence.

   The library reading room is on the eighth floor of the building.

   His eighth birthday party had a space theme.

   Note

   The ordinal the other senses grow from: Old English eahtoþa, built from eight and the ordinal ending -th. The join explains the spelling. Middle English eiȝtthe wrote both letters, but modern spelling lets the t of eight and the th of the suffix share one t, so it is eighth, never eightth. It is not comparable. It sits in ordered series: the eighth rank of a chessboard, the eighth consecutive year.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   One of eight equal parts into which a whole is divided.

   Roughly an eighth of the town's population voted in the local election.

   She measured out an eighth of the flour for the recipe.

   Note

   As a fraction it takes the plural freely: two eighths, five eighths. The old money phrase two bits shows the fraction at work. If two bits equals two eighths of a dollar, then a bit is an eighth, and two bits make a quarter. Apply the same fraction to an ounce and you get the slang drug quantity.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The person or thing occupying the eighth position in a sequence.

   He was the eighth in line to inherit the throne.

   The eighth on the waiting list finally got the last open seat.

4. 4
   nounslangcountable

   Roughly 3.5 grams of marijuana or another drug: that is, an eighth of an ounce.

   She picked up an eighth on her way home from work.

   The dealer sold him an eighth for forty dollars.

   Note

   Street slang that keeps the fraction and drops the unit: the "of an ounce" goes unsaid, because buyers and sellers already know it. Zadie Smith's White Teeth (2000) has "an ageing eighth of hash," which shows the word reaching beyond marijuana. Use it only in casual talk among people who know the trade. Elsewhere, "an eighth of an ounce" or "about 3.5 grams" avoids confusion.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   In music, the interval between two pitches, one of which has twice the frequency of the other.

   In strict counterpoint, the outer voices should begin and end on a perfect consonance: the unison, the fifth, or the eighth.

   She tuned the two strings an eighth apart.

   Similaroctave

   Note

   The name comes from counting scale steps the way musicians count intervals, with both ends included. Climbing from a note to the note at double its frequency covers eight steps, just as a fifth covers five. In ordinary musical usage octave is the usual word. Eighth for the interval can be misread as the fraction, so context has to make the musical sense plain.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To divide something into eight equal parts.

   Line producers eighth each scene so they can estimate how long it will take to shoot.

   The assistant director spent the morning eighthing the script, page by page.

   Note

   A regular verb (eighths, eighthing, eighthed) at home in film production. Raindance Producers' Lab Lo-To-No Budget Filmmaking (2013) tells producers to "eighth the script out" and warns that "eighthing a script is subjective." The divisions are judgment calls, not strict arithmetic. Out is a natural partner, as in break out or split out.

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