Word.ws English Dictionary

tens

tens is the plural of ten.

Noun (1)

tens pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) An inexact quantity or number, typically understood to be between 10 or 20 and 100.
    • Our houses are tens of meters apart, so we don't have to worry about noise from our neighbours.
    • tens of thousands of voters
    Synonyms:
    dozens
  2. (plural, plural-only, slang) A pair of tens.
  3. (plural, plural-only) The period from a year ending in 10 to a year ending in 19 (mostly referring to the 1910s or 2010s); the teens, the oneties.

Meaning of ten

Noun

ten (countable and uncountable, plural tens)

  1. A set or group with ten elements.
    • We divided the chocolates into tens to hand out to Hallowe'en visitors.
  2. (in plural) An inexact quantity, typically understood to be between 20 and 100.
    • Our houses are tens of meters apart, so we don't have to worry about noise from our neighbours.
  3. (countable) A card in a given suit with a value of ten.
  4. (countable) A denomination of currency, such as a banknote, with a value of ten units.
    • Can you give me two tens for this twenty?
    Synonyms:
    tenner
  5. (US, countable, slang) A perfect specimen, (particularly) a physically attractive person.
    • I was in the Woodley Park–Zoo in D.C. and mom and sister were waiting to see the pandas, so me and my pops broke away to check out the monkey house. Well, there was a beautiful teacher, I mean we're talking a ten, she was blond, had a low-cut dress on, just gorgeous. And she has about eight or nine...2006 May 9, Penn Jillette, Michael Goudeau, quoting Chris, 22:22 from the start, in Penn Radio
    Synonyms:
    dime piece
  6. (US, countable, slang) A high level of intensity.
    • "Intensities in 10 Cities"1981 March 2, Intensities in 10 Cities, performed by Ted Nugent

See all 8 meanings of ten

Noun (2) capitalized: TENS

TENS (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation.
  2. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of toxic epidermal necrolysis.

Synonyms of tens

Phrases with tens

Words that rhyme with tens

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tens

What does tens mean?
Tens means an inexact quantity or number, typically understood to be between 10 or 20 and 100.
What is tens the plural of?
Tens is the plural of ten.
What part of speech is tens?
Tens is a noun.

Words near tens in the dictionary

  1. Tenriism
  2. Tenrikyo
  3. Tenrikyoist
  4. Tenrikyoists
  5. Tenrikyō
  6. tens
  7. tens across the board
  8. tensal
  9. tensan
  10. Tensas Parish
  11. Tensaw

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tens (page history and authors); TENS (page history and authors); ten (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: “tens.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tens. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.