Where does “forties” come from?
Forties comes from Middle English feortiȝ, from Old English fēowertiġ, from Proto-Germanic fedwōr tigiwiz, a compound of the number four and a word for group or ten.
forties (English): plural of forty; API pl; The decade of the 1840s,...
Definitions
- plural of forty; API pl; The decade of the 1840s,...
Ancestry of “forties”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | forty | The cardinal number occurring after thirty-nine... |
| 2 | English | Y | A figure or mark in the shape of the letter Y; A... |
| 3 | English | yuri | A narrative or visual work featuring a romance or... |
| 4 | Japanese | 百合 | lily |
| 5 | Japanese | 連用形 | an inflectional category: the continuative or... |
| 6 | Japanese | 見る | to see, to watch, to observe, to look at... |
| 7 | Japanese | 夢 | a dream; a vision; leaving reality to the state... |
| 8 | Old Japanese | 夢 | a dream |
| 9 | Japanese | 目 | an order in biology: smaller than a class, bigger... |
| 10 | Middle Chinese | 目 | — |