Word.ws English Dictionary

40s

40s noun: the decade of the 1940s. Also the plural of 40.

Noun (1)

40s (uncountable)

  1. The decade of the 1940s.
    Synonyms:
    1940s, forties
  2. A range of the numbers forty (40) to forty-nine (49).
    • Women in their 40s were counseled to make individual decisions together with their health care provider, but there was no explicit recommendation for them to start until they turned 50.2024 May 8, Katia Hetter, “Mammograms are now recommended starting at age 40. Should you get one?”, in CNN

Noun (2) capitalized: 40S

40S (uncountable)

  1. (molecular biology) The small subunit of the eukaryotic 80S ribosomes.

Also used as

40s is also the plural of 40.

Synonyms of 40s

Forms of 40s

alternative form'40s
alternative form40's

Origin of 40s

Abbreviated form of 1940s.

Referring to its sedimentation coefficient measured in svedbergs (S).

Phrases with 40s

Questions about 40s

What does 40s mean?
40s means the decade of the 1940s.
What part of speech is 40s?
40s is a noun.

Words near 40s in the dictionary

  1. 404'd
  2. 404ed
  3. 404ing
  4. 404s
  5. 40k
  6. 40s
  7. 40th
  8. 41%
  9. 41%'ed
  10. 41%ing
  11. 41%s

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 40s (page history and authors); 40S (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “40s.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/40s. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.