Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The ordinal number matching the number 12 in a series.
- n. One of 12 equal parts.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Next in order after the eleventh: an ordinal numeral.
- Being one of twelve equal parts into which a whole is regarded as divided.
- n. One of twelve equal parts of anything; the quotient of unity divided by twelve.
- n. In early English law, a twelfth of the rents of the year, or of movables, or both, granted or levied by way of tax.
- n. In music, a tone twelve diatonic degrees above or below a given tone, or the interval between two such tones; a compound fifth.
- n. In organ-building, a stop giving tones a twelfth above the normal pitch of the digitals used.
- n. Twelfth-day.
Wiktionary
- adj. ordinal The ordinal form of number twelve, describing a person or thing in position number 12 of a sequence.
- n. fractional One of twelve equal parts of a whole.
- n. music An interval equal to an octave plus a fifth
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Next in order after the eleventh; coming after eleven others; -- the ordinal of
twelve . - adj. Constituting, or being one of, twelve equal parts into which anything is divided.
- n. The quotient of a unit divided by twelve; one of twelve equal parts of one whole.
- n. The next in order after the eleventh.
- n. (Mus.) An interval comprising an octave and a fifth.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. coming next after the eleventh and just before the thirteenth in position
- n. one part in twelve equal parts
- n. position 12 in a countable series of things
Etymologies
- Middle English twelfthe, alteration of Old English twelfta; see dwo- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Heloise in twelfth century Paris certainly falls under this last category.”
Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany
“The twelfth century had the audacity of its passions, and Wagner at times talks almost plain twelfth century language. —”
“For me, gym class finally became almost bearable in twelfth-grade, when the emphasis shifted from team sports to what the teacher called "lifelong activities" like running, golf, and tennis.”
“Song for Eloise set in twelfth century France and fifteen year old Eloise is married off to a man twice her age.”
“Set in twelfth century Sicily think saracens, crusades, holy wars, internecine strife, monasteries usually enough there to latch onto but I have truly floundered with this one.”
First Booker-thon failure The Ruby in Her Navel by Barry Unsworth
“The child's importance in twelfth - and thirteenth-century Christian culture is apparent in the accusations 'reworking of the gospel narratives, replacing the adult on the cross with a child, just as the eucharistic visions and the Juitel substituted a bleeding Christ Child for the host.”
A Tender Age: Cultural Anxieties over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
“While it is generally argued that Christian piety of a later period (the devotio moderna) displayed tendencies toward extreme emotional outpourings, the texts discussed here suggest a similar phenomenon in twelfth - and thirteenth-century piety, centered on images of childhood and maternity.”
A Tender Age: Cultural Anxieties over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
“Alroy is set in twelfth-century Hamadan, where the”
“In fact, the ‘historic’ Alroy was a self-appointed messiah in twelfth-century Kurdistan who asserted mythical and magic powers and who was finally executed and disgraced.”
“I suppose I became a nuisance, for when I called the twelfth or twentieth time at the office in Bowling Green, he waxed wroth with sudden vehemence and tried to put me out.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘twelfth’.
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BUDG - general terms
Budgetese - not a sexy topic but a very comprehensive list of words and collocations used in EU circles. Budgeting experts please comment and expand.
heading, across-the-board ..., emergency reserve, frontload, mopping-up, performance reserve, positive margin, negative margin, public finances, structural operat..., administrative ex..., management of EU ... and 657 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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EN - eesily missspellable wirds
accessible, accommodate, achievement, acquaintance, address, advertisement, alleged, athletics, attendance, auxiliary, believe, challenge and 118 more...
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Organ Stops
A list of pipe- and pedal-organ stops. These have variously and perhaps at times capriciously been named and labelled by organ builders in Latin, English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, a...
diapason, double open diapason, sub-bourdon, double dulciana, bourdon, contra gamba, pyramidon, open diapason, stopped diapason, dulcis, dulciana, viol-di-gamba and 244 more...
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Gesundheit
Words that sound like sneezes
zucchini, zoology, wysiwyg, woodchuck, withhold, wichita, vacuum, twelfth, syzygy, synchronous, swatch, supersede and 120 more...
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EU Buzz - Lisbon Treaty
All words of the Lisbon Treaty
(Persons' names, foreign and grammatical words have been eliminated, MWEs have been split up into individual words. Capitalization has been retained if r...conferral, stateless, person, voting, right, subsidiarity, Latvia, Malta, Slovenia, Lithuania, Finland, Estonia and 2614 more...
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Periodic Table of Cake
I should have known better, but once I got started on this, I realized it’s basically the same thing as Ruzuzu’s list “Let them eat cake”, with less cake.
cheese, ague, almond, alum, pan, ash, beef, tea, Baddeley, daikon, yellow, zebra and 44 more...
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tale-of-two-cities
Words from the book 'Tale of two cities'
attacks, insecure, minorca, forgets, attested, revered, necessary, nothing, bankers, genoese, burthen, tobacco and 14 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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Alaric's Words
chelation, bradykinetic, twelfth, dank, kulak, oneiric, cathexis, yonder, quern, lissome, naiad, krakatoan and 124 more...
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Pull out the stops
Organ stops, that is.
diapason, clarabella, dulciana, bourdon, reed stop, flue stop, violoncello, suabe flute, waldflute, rackett, pyramidon, querflöte and 106 more...
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sarahatlee's Words
pants, nekkid, schadenfreude, unseasonably, illicit, glaswegian, cripes, futz, drawers, scupper, coulrophobic, redacted and 254 more...
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Rhymeless.
From wikipedia: "The following is a list of English words without rhymes, i.e. a list of words in the English language which rhyme with no other English words in the sense that they are pronounced ...
almond, angry, angst, anxious, aspirin, bachelor, breadth, bulb, bulbous, calumny, cannabis, caveat and 49 more...
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They Stumble Off The Tongue
Words that are painful to say. The English language was meant to flow, and these words deserve exile. A complement to the list They Roll Off The Tongue.
interrobang, viviparous, irredentist, hypotension, betelgeuse, hough, infrared, ghoti, gloucester, colonel, oases, aposiopesis and 18 more...
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Words I absolutely loathe.
moist, supple, twelfth, secrete, birthday, y'all, whet, fungus, penal, chillax, cupboard, gyrate and 17 more...
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Monosyllabic words I can't find rhyme...
kiln, wasp, orange, fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, tenth, month, plinth, flange, else and 16 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for twelfth.
mollusque See the conversation at texts. Mar 29, 2009
rolig It's three consonant sounds: /l/, /f/, and /th/; another ordinal with three consonant sounds is sixth: /k/, /s/, and /th/. Mar 29, 2009
rdoermann This word is awesome because it at least three consonant sounds in a row. Or is it four? I think the most you can have in a row in the English language is four. Mar 29, 2009
uselessness Great word! I'm trying to decide which I like better, this or eighth. Fifth gets honorable mention. Jan 16, 2007