Five

//faɪv// name, noun, num

name, noun, num ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The digit/figure 5.

    "He wrote a five followed by four zeroes."

  2. 2
    a playing card or a domino or a die whose upward face shows five pips wordnet
  3. 3
    A banknote with a denomination of five units of currency. See also fiver.

    "Can anyone here change a five?"

  4. 4
    a team that plays basketball wordnet
  5. 5
    Anything measuring five units, as length.

    "All the fives are over there in the corner, next to the fours."

Show 5 more definitions
  1. 6
    the cardinal number that is the sum of four and one wordnet
  2. 7
    A person who is five years old.

    "The fives and sixes will have a snack first, then the older kids."

  3. 8
    Five o'clock.

    "See you at five."

  4. 9
    A short rest, especially one of five minutes.

    "Take five, soldier."

  5. 10
    A basketball team, club or lineup.
Adjective
  1. 1
    being one more than four wordnet
Numeral
  1. 1
    A numerical value equal to 5; the number following four and preceding six.

    "The r-stems had apparently been reduced to the five nuclear kinship terms that still survive in Modern English."

  2. 2
    Describing a group or set with five elements.
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    Abbreviation of MI5. UK, abbreviation, alt-of

Synonyms

All synonyms
555basketball teambasketball teamcast

Example

More examples

"It will take five to ten years for the technology to be ready."

Etymology

PIE word *pénkʷe From Middle English five, vif, fif, from Old English fīf (“five”), from Proto-West Germanic *fimf (“five”), from Proto-Germanic *fimf (“five”), from Proto-Indo-European *pénkʷe. See also West Frisian fiif, Dutch vijf, German fünf, Norwegian and Swedish fem, Icelandic fimm; also Welsh pump, Latin quinque, Tocharian A päñ, Tocharian B piś, Lithuanian penki, Russian пять (pjatʹ), Albanian pesë, pêsë, Ancient Greek πέντε (pénte), Armenian հինգ (hing), Persian پنج (panj), Sanskrit पञ्च (páñca). Doublet of cinque, fin (“five currency units”), finnuf, pimp (“five”), ponzu, punch (“beverage”), and sengi (“currency”); related to Pompeii. The nasal *m in Proto-Germanic *fimf was lost through a sound change known as the Ingvaeonic nasal spirant law.

Related phrases

Five AshesFive HousesFive PointsFive Power Defence ArrangementsFive WaysLipinski's rule of fivePfizer's rule of fivePower FiveRosie Palmer and her five sistersafter-fivealert fiveand I claim my five pounds

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