Fifth

adj, name, noun, verb, slang

adj, name, noun, verb, slang ·1 syllable ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The person or thing in the fifth position.
  2. 2
    the musical interval between one note and another five notes away from it wordnet
  3. 3
    The person or thing in the fifth position.; The fifth gear of a transmission. ellipsis
  4. 4
    a quantity of liquor equal to one fifth of a United States gallon wordnet
  5. 5
    One of five equal parts of a whole: one-fifth.
Show 5 more definitions
  1. 6
    one part in five equal parts wordnet
  2. 7
    A quantity of liquor equal to one-fifth of an American gallon, or, more commonly, 750 milliliters (that is, three quarters of a liter). US
  3. 8
    position five in a countable series of things wordnet
  4. 9
    The musical interval between one note and another five scale degrees higher (the fifth note in a scale)

    "Now I've heard there was a secret chord / That David played, and it pleased the Lord / But you don't really care for music, do ya? / It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth"

  5. 10
    The fifth voice in a polyphonic melody.
Verb
  1. 1
    To sing in the fifth voice in a polyphonic melody.

    "Another extension of strict organum is 'fifthing'. Fifthing is a note-against- note method of creating a two-part texture by improvising a second voice over the given tune, starting and ending each musical phrase at the octave and proceeding mainly in fifths above the tune at others times."

  2. 2
    To support something fifth, after four others have already done so. informal, transitive

    "A lisping young “Soundings,” or master’s assistant, sung out “I thecond the mothon,” instantly transferring his beer to our hero’s face. In short the resolution was thirded, fourthed, fifthed, and sixthed, all following suit with the swipes:[…]"

  3. 3
    To divide by five. nonstandard, transitive

    "3/5 has been through fifthing. 2/3 has been through thirding. Therefore, 3/5 now needs thirding and 2/3 needs fifthing"

Adjective
  1. 1
    The ordinal form of the number five. not-comparable

    "On Friday, at a former Michelin factory in the north-east of the city, the finishing touches were being put in place for the fifth Dundee design festival, which opens on Monday."

Adjective
  1. 1
    coming next after the fourth and just before the sixth in position wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    The Fifth Amendment. US, informal
  2. 2
    The right not to give self-incriminating testimony. US, broadly, informal
  3. 3
    Fifth Avenue. US

    "[…] besides marrying Nate Archibald and living happily every after in the ivy-covered brick town house just off Fifth that she already had picked out"

  4. 4
    Fifth Street. US

Synonyms

All synonyms
5th5th5thbottlecanteenconsecutive intervals

Example

More examples

"A fire broke out on the fifth floor."

Etymology

Etymology 1

PIE word *pénkʷe From Middle English fifthe, fifte, fift, from Old English fīfta (“fifth”), from Proto-Germanic *fimftô (“fifth”) or *femftô, equivalent to five + -th (ordinal suffix). Cognate with Scots fift, fyft (“fifth”), North Frisian fyfde (“fifth”), West Frisian fyfde (“fifth”), Dutch vijfde (“fifth”), Low German fifte, föfte, füfte (“fifth”), German fünfte (“fifth”), Danish femte (“fifth”), Swedish femte (“fifth”), Icelandic fimmta (“fifth”).

Etymology 2

(Fifth Amendment): From the name of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, protecting various rights in US legal proceedings.

Related phrases

Fifth AmendmentFifth CycleFifth MonthFifth SunFifth WorldRevenge of the Fifthaugmented fifthdiminished fifthfifth basefifth columnfifth cousinfifth cranial nerve

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.