seventeen

seventeen — number

1. the number between sixteen and eighteen, used when counting a group of people or

1.numberA1
Definition

the number between sixteen and eighteen, used when counting a group of people or things

Example

Tamar invited seventeen friends to her birthday party.

seventeen + plural noun for counting

Caleb bought the jacket for seventeen dollars at the shop.

seventeen + [currency] expressing cost

Common collocations
  • seventeen years old
  • seventeen people
  • seventeen dollars
  • seventeen minutes

Grammar Patterns

seventeen + plural countable noun

Common Mistakes

The store has seventhteen different kinds of tea.
The store has seventeen different kinds of tea.
'seventeen' has no 'th' in the middle; do not confuse it with 'seventh'.

seventeen — noun

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: number/1

Etymology

Old EnglishEnglish

Seventeen comes from the Old English word 'seofontīene', which was a combination of 'seofon' (seven) and 'tīene' (ten). This structure — 'seven' + 'teen' — follows the same pattern as other English numbers from thirteen to nineteen, where 'teen' is a shortened form of 'ten'. The word has kept its basic form for over a thousand years.