Word.ws English Dictionary

999

UK/naɪn.naɪn.naɪn/

999 proper noun: the telephone number for emergency services in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Burma, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Sudan, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Guyana, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Dominica, Kiribati, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, and the Seychelles.

Proper noun

999

  1. The telephone number for emergency services in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Burma, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Sudan, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Guyana, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Dominica, Kiribati, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, and the Seychelles.
    • I don't know why they couldn't just keep it as it was! How hard is it to remember 911?
      You mean 999...
      I mean 999!
      That's the American one!
      Yeah!2006 Feb. 3, Graham Linehan, The IT Crowd, Season 1, Episode 2
    • When you call 999 in the UK, the operator usually answers the phone with "Emergency. Which service?"
  2. The telephone number for law enforcement in Singapore, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Eswatini, Botswana, Tanzania, Mauritius, and Trinidad and Tobago.
  3. The telephone number for firefighting assistance in Malawi and Tonga.
  4. The telephone number for ambulance services in Poland.

Noun

999 (uncountable)

  1. (Hong-Kong, Ireland, Singapore, UK, colloquial, metonymically) Emergency services; emergency service personnel.

Forms of 999

alternative formnine nine nine
alternative formtriple nine

Origin of 999

Established in the United Kingdom as the first emergency service number in the world, initially chosen because of its suitability at a time of rotary-dial telephones.

Questions about 999

What does 999 mean?
999 means the telephone number for emergency services in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Burma, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Sudan, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Guyana, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Dominica, Kiribati, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, and the Seychelles.
What part of speech is 999?
999 can be a proper noun or a noun.
How do you pronounce 999?
999 is pronounced /naɪn.naɪn.naɪn/ (UK).

Words near 999 in the dictionary

  1. 99.99 percent
  2. 990
  3. 990s
  4. 995
  5. 996
  6. 999
  7. 99er
  8. 99ers
  9. 99s
  10. 99th
  11. 9ber

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 999 (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: “999.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/999. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.