ninth
/naɪnθ/adjective, noun, verb
ninth is spelled N-I-N-T-H. The wrong spelling people search most is nineth: about 320 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 3 in 10 of all searches for the word. Ninth is an adjective meaning “The ordinal form of the number nine”.
How many letters and syllables are in ninth?
| Letters | 5: N-I-N-T-H |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 12 times per million words; the 6,347th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, nineth, about 320 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell ninth?
Ninth is spelled N-I-N-T-H. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 3 in 10 of the searches for ninth in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is ninth?
Ninth appears 12 times per million words in written English, the 6,347th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce ninth?
- US /naɪnθ/
Ninth has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-ninth.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of ninth
- ninths plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- ninthing participle, present
- ninthed participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does ninth mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
The ordinal form of the number nine.
noun
- 1
The person or thing in the ninth position.
- 2
One of nine equal parts of a whole.
- 3
The compound interval between any tone and the tone represented on the ninth degree of the staff above it, as between one of the scale and two of the octave above; the octave of the second, consisting of 13 or 14 semitones (called minor and major ninth).
verb
- 1
To lose a ninth.
- 2
To divide by nine.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Ninth in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | neuvième, neuf |
| German | neunte , Neunter , Neuntel |
| Portuguese | nono , nona |
| Spanish | noveno, nono , novena |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does ninth come from?
From Middle English nynthe, nynte, from Old English niġoþa, from Proto-Germanic *newundô; the -n- was reinserted by analogy with nine. Equivalent to nine + -th (ordinal suffix).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).