fifteen

Pluralfifteens

1. 1
   numeralcardinal

   The cardinal number that follows fourteen and precedes sixteen.

   The team needed fifteen points to win the match.

   Only fifteen of the original applicants remained by the final round.

   Note

   Five and -teen fused into a single word long ago: Old English fīftīene, from Proto-Germanic *fimftehun, with cousins in Dutch vijftien, German fünfzehn and Danish femten. Its ordinal is fifteenth. Like other cardinals, it can stand before a noun (the fifteen allies) or on its own. It pairs readily with "or so" for a rough count, as in Christopher Hodder-Williams's "fifteen or so lethargic wanderers."

2. 2
   nounIrelandcountable

   A sweet Irish traybake in which crushed digestive biscuits, marshmallows, and glacé cherries are mixed with condensed milk and desiccated coconut.

   A plate of fifteens went round with the tea after the christening.

   Her fifteen recipe came from a battered parish cookbook, with the measurements scribbled in the margin.

   Note

   A teatime word from Ireland that lives almost entirely in the plural: people make fifteens, and a plate of fifteens goes round. The singular turns up mainly before another noun, as in a fifteen recipe. Because the spelling is the same as the plain number, a listener outside Ireland may simply hear a count. Talk of tea or baking is what makes the meaning clear.

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