tens
- 1Plural of ten.
The cashier handed over a thick stack of tens.
Two tens added together make twenty.
Note
The everyday plural counts whatever a single ten can be: a set of ten, a card of that value, or a banknote worth ten units, as in a wallet full of tens. In US slang a ten is also a perfect specimen, often an attractive person, so tens can mean several of them. That use is slang and best kept casual. Unlike the vague "tens of" quantity, this plural takes an exact number: three tens.
- 2An inexact quantity or number, usually understood as falling somewhere between 10 or 20 and 100.
Tens of researchers signed the open letter within a single afternoon.
The festival drew tens of food stalls along the riverbank.
Similardozens
Note
A deliberately vague plural that almost always arrives as tens of before a plural noun: tens of meters, tens of miles, tens of thousands of voters. It is especially at home with units of measure. It can be hedged further, as in Iain M. Banks's Consider Phlebas (1987): several tens of hours. Dozens does much the same job, and either can stack with a larger unit to suggest scale.
- 3The decade spanning the years ending in 10 through 19, most often the 1910s or 2010s; also called the teens.
The building boom of the tens reshaped the city's skyline.
Music from the tens still dominates many of her playlists.
Similarteens
Note
A decade name with rivals: the teens and the oneties cover the same span. It needs the article (the tens), and that keeps it apart from the vague "tens of" quantity. The phrase can point to either the 1910s or the 2010s, so writers add the century whenever context leaves the reader guessing.
- 4In poker and similar card games, a pair of tens held or shown by a player.
She was dealt pocket tens just before the flop.
He raised hard, confident his tens would hold up.
Note
Card-table shorthand. In poker a pair is named by its rank in the plural, so two ten cards are simply tens, just as two jacks are jacks. As a pair, tens rank below jacks and above nines. The word is slang of the game and is always plural in grammar, so it takes a plural verb: his tens held, her tens were beaten.
tens is a form of ten
ten, noun: In the plural, an inexact number several times ten, or several times a stated amount, as in 'tens of volunteers' or 'tens of thousands'. Full entry
- Forms
- tentens plural
- Spelling
- ten → tens: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of tens apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.