Word.ws English Dictionary

four-and-twenty

four-and-twenty numeral: twenty-four. (24).

Numeral

four-and-twenty

  1. (archaic) Twenty-four. (24)
    • Ouer the firſt companie the firſt month Ieſboam was chiefe the ſonne of Zabdiel, and vnder him foure and twentie thouſand.1609, The Holie Bible, […] (Douay–Rheims Bible), Doway: Laurence Kellam, […], →OCLC, 1 Paralipomenon 27:2, page 863
    • Sing a Song of Sixpence, / A bag full of Rye, / Four and twenty Naughty Boys,/ Baked in a Pye.1744, Sing a Song of Sixpence, in Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book (earliest known written version)

Forms of four-and-twenty

alternative formfour and twenty

Questions about four-and-twenty

What does four-and-twenty mean?
Four-and-twenty means twenty-four. (24).
What part of speech is four-and-twenty?
Four-and-twenty is a numeral.

Words near four-and-twenty in the dictionary

  1. four-ale
  2. four-ale bar
  3. four-ales
  4. four-and-nine
  5. four-and-nines
  6. four-and-twenty
  7. four-bagger
  8. four-baggers
  9. four-ball
  10. four-balls
  11. four-belt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: four-and-twenty (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.

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