Read along with the three podcasts, or open the full dictionary entry for Sixteenth for the definition, Arabic meaning, synonyms and example sentences.
Narrator: Today's word is "sixteenth" — an ordinal number and noun, pronounced /ˌsɪksˈtiːnθ/, with the stress on "teenth".
Narrator: Sixteenth means coming after fifteenth and before seventeenth in a sequence — number sixteen in order.
Narrator: In plain English, if you're the sixteenth in a queue, fifteen people stand ahead of you.
Narrator: As a noun, a sixteenth is one of sixteen equal parts of something — a sixteenth of a whole.
Narrator: The word is built from "sixteen" plus the ordinal suffix "-th", a pattern English uses for most numbers.
Narrator: "Sixteen" itself comes from the Old English "sixtiene" — six and ten joined together.
Narrator: It appears in music too: a sixteenth note is a short note, half the length of an eighth note.
Narrator: In tone it's neutral and factual — at home in dates, rankings, fractions, and the famous "sweet sixteenth" birthday.
Narrator: So remember: sixteenth means number sixteen in order, or one part out of sixteen equal pieces.
Speaker A: It's her sixteenth birthday on Saturday — a big one in some families.
Speaker B: Ah, the sweet sixteenth. People make quite a fuss of that age, don't they?
Speaker A: They do. And note it's "sixteenth", the order, not "sixteen", the plain count.
Speaker B: Right — sixteen is how many, sixteenth is which one in line.
Speaker A: Exactly. "He came sixteenth in the race" tells you his rank.
Speaker B: There's the fraction sense too — cut the cake into sixteenths.
Speaker A: A common mistake is writing "sixteen th" with a space — it's one word.
Speaker B: True, and the abbreviation is 16th, with t-h on the end.
Speaker A: Close synonyms? There's no real synonym for an ordinal — it's exact.
Speaker B: Right, you can only paraphrase it as "number sixteen in order".
Speaker A: So the meeting is on the sixteenth of June, sixteenth in the month.
Speaker B: Perfect — precise, ordered, and unmistakable.
Speaker B: Let's use "sixteenth" in prompts to mean precise ordering, ranking, and dividing things into exact parts.
Speaker A: So "sixteenth" tells the AI to be exact about position or fractions?
Speaker B: Exactly. For a leaderboard, you'd write:
Prompt: Build a leaderboard that ranks players from first to last. Show each player's exact position, so the sixteenth player clearly reads as sixteenth, with no ties skipped.
Speaker B: The word "sixteenth" reminds the model that ordinal positions must be exact and clear.
Speaker A: Useful. What about a grid layout?
Speaker B: Try this:
Prompt: Create a four-by-four grid of sixteen cards. Number them in order so the sixteenth card sits in the bottom-right corner, and highlight whichever card the user clicks.
Speaker A: So the order is precise across the grid.
Speaker B: Right. For a music app:
Prompt: Build a simple beat sequencer with sixteen steps per bar. Let users toggle each sixteenth note on or off, and play the pattern back at the chosen tempo.
Speaker A: I like that. What about splitting values?
Speaker B: Here you go:
Prompt: Write a function that divides any amount into sixteenths. Return each sixteenth rounded to two decimals, and make sure the sixteen parts always add back to the exact total.
Speaker A: Could it handle a date picker too?
Speaker B: Yes:
Prompt: Build a date picker that highlights the sixteenth of each month as payday. Mark every sixteenth clearly, and show a small note reminding the user it is a pay date.
Speaker A: So "sixteenth" means exact order or an exact fraction.
Speaker B: Exactly — a precise word that keeps your counting honest.
Sixteenth — meaning in Arabic & definition More S courses GL Dictionary