tenth

Pluraltenths

Formstenths, tenthing, tenthed

1. 1
   adjective

   Coming next in order after the ninth; corresponding to the number ten in a sequence.

   The reading room is on the tenth floor of the library.

   Their team won the tenth match of the season last night.

   Note

   Behind this ordinal sits a word that English rebuilt. Old English said tēoþa, which survives as tithe. Middle English speakers, pulled by the analogy of ten, remade the regular ordinal and put the nasal back, giving tenth. English now holds both: tithe keeps the old shape, and tenth, the regular one, does the counting, as in the tenth time, the tenth day, or Dickens's tenth year of captivity.

2. 2
   nouncountable

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

   The recipe calls for a tenth of a cup of oil.

   Roughly nine tenths of the iceberg lies beneath the surface.

3. 3
   adjective

   Constituting one of ten equal parts of a whole.

   The investor holds a tenth part of the company.

   They split the land so that each owner held a tenth portion.

   Note

   Here the word names a share, not a place in line. The King James Bible of 1611 measures the Bath as "the tenth part of an Homer." As an adjective, this sense needs a noun such as part or portion to lean on, while the noun "a tenth" carries the same meaning on its own: a tenth part of the company is simply a tenth of the company.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The person or thing coming next after the ninth in a sequence; the one in the tenth position.

   Among the climbers, she was the tenth to reach the summit.

   Our guest was the tenth to arrive at the reception.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   The interval between a tone and the tone ten degrees above it on the staff, equal to an octave plus a third.

   The cellist stretched to play a tenth in the opening phrase.

   The arranger spread the harmony across a wide tenth.

   Note

   Musicians count intervals inclusively, so a tenth runs from C up through the next octave to the E above it, ten staff degrees counting both ends. It is a compound interval, the third heard an octave higher, and it behaves like that third in harmony. On keyboard or cello, a tenth is a notable stretch. Spreading a chord across it opens up the sound without changing its harmony.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A unit of length equal to one ten-thousandth of an inch, that is, a tenth of a mil.

   He shaved a tenth off the diameter to meet the spec.

   The shop holds tolerances of a few tenths on critical surfaces.

   Note

   On the shop floor the word shrinks a thousandfold. A machinist's tenth is a tenth of a mil, one ten-thousandth of an inch, not a tenth of an inch. Shop talk counts in it directly: a part held to "a few tenths" is being made very precisely. Outside machining, readers should expect the ordinary fraction instead, so context decides which tenth is meant.

7. 7
   nounhistoricalUKcountableplural

   A temporary tax granted to the king by Parliament, originally a tenth part of all the movable goods belonging to a subject.

   Parliament voted the king a tenth to fund the campaign in France.

   Collectors gathered the tenth from merchants across the shire.

   Note

   An old term of English fiscal law, used in the plural: Parliament granted the king "tenths" as a temporary aid drawn from personal property. The name began as a literal description, a true tenth of a subject's movable goods, and later outlived the arithmetic, surviving as the label for the grant. In modern writing it belongs to historical accounts of royal taxation, not to any current levy.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To divide something by ten, into ten equal parts.

   Accountants tenth the estate so each heir receives an equal portion.

   To tenth the dough, she cut it into ten even pieces.

   Note

   A measurer's working verb. The Practical Measurer (1832) gives a rule for how a cistern "may be inched or tenthed," pairing it with inch as two ways of dividing a vessel's measure into equal steps. It is fully regular: tenths, tenthing, tenthed. Its home is practical gauging and calculation. Everyday English usually prefers "divide into tenths."

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