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forty

numeralnounadjectivecommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈfɔːti//
  • United Kingdom//ˈfoːtɪj//
  • United States//ˈfoɹti//
  • United States/[ˈfoɹɾi]/
  • /[ˈfɑɹɾij]/

The cardinal number occurring after thirty-nine and before forty-one, represented in Roman numerals as XL and in Arabic numerals as 40.

numeral

  1. 1

    The cardinal number occurring after thirty-nine and before forty-one, represented in Roman numerals as XL and in Arabic numerals as 40.

    'Tis forty years this very day, Since you and I, old girl, were married.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kʷetwṓr Proto-Germanic *fedwōr Proto-Indo-European *déḱm̥-t(-s) Proto-Germanic *tegun(dz) Proto-Germanic *tigiwiz Proto-Germanic *fedwōr tigiwiz Proto-West Germanic *feuwar tigiwi Old English fēowertiġ Middle English fourty English forty From Middle English fourty, forty, from Old English fēowertiġ, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *fedwōr tigiwiz (“forty”). By surface analysis, four + -ty.

noun

  1. 1

    slangA bottle (of beer) containing forty fluid ounces.

    It's on, wrap my lips around the forty / And when it comes to getting another stogie […] Grab your forty, let's get keyed

adjective

  1. 1

    Resembling or characteristic of a fort.

Etymology

From fort + y.

Forms

plural
forties
comparative
more forty
superlative
most forty
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).