fourteenth

Pluralfourteenths

1. 1
   adjective

   Occupying the position numbered fourteen in an ordered sequence, coming immediately after the thirteenth.

   The committee met for the fourteenth time this year.

   July marks the fourteenth anniversary of the company's founding.

   Note

   Old English already had the word as fēowertēoþa, and it is built the regular way: fourteen plus the ordinal ending -th, the same pattern that gives sixteenth and seventeenth. As an ordinal it is not comparable. A thing is fourteenth or it is not, never more fourteenth than another. It sits before the noun it ranks, as in the fourteenth time or the fourteenth anniversary.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The person or thing occupying position fourteen in a sequence or order.

   Among the runners, she crossed the line as the fourteenth.

   Louis the Fourteenth built the palace at Versailles.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   Any one of fourteen equal parts into which a whole is divided.

   She inherited a fourteenth of her grandfather's estate.

   When split among the partners, each fourteenth came to a modest sum.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The musical interval that comprises an octave plus a seventh.

   Composers occasionally write a fourteenth to create a wide, open sound.

   The cellist reached for a fourteenth, stretching nearly two octaves.

   Note

   Music counts intervals inclusively, which is why an octave and a seventh make fourteen rather than fifteen: the note where they meet is counted only once. It is a compound interval, spanning fourteen scale degrees from the bottom note to the top. Harmonically it behaves as a seventh lifted an octave higher, so musicians often hear it, and analyze it, simply as a widely spaced seventh.

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