six
pronunciation
How to pronounce six in British English:
UK [sɪks]
How to pronounce six in American English:
US [sɪks]
-
- Noun:
- the cardinal number that is the sum of five and one
-
- Adjective:
- denoting a quantity consisting of six items or units
Word Origin
- six
- six: [OE] The Indo-European ancestor of six was *seks, which also produced Latin sex (source of English sextant, sextuplet, etc), Greek héx, Welsh chwech, Russian shest’, etc. The word’s Germanic relatives include German sechs, Dutch zes, and Swedish and Danish sex. => sextant
- six (n.)
- Old English siex, six, sex, from Proto-Germanic *sekhs (cognates: Old Saxon and Danish seks, Old Norse, Swedish, and Old Frisian sex, Middle Dutch sesse, Dutch zes, Old High German sehs, German sechs, Gothic saihs), from PIE *s(w)eks (cognates: Sanskrit sas, Avestan kshvash, Persian shash, Greek hex, Latin sex, Old Church Slavonic sesti, Polish sześć, Russian shesti, Lithuanian szeszi, Old Irish se, Welsh chwech). Six-shooter, usually a revolver with six chambers, is first attested 1844; six-pack of beverage containers is from 1952, of abdominal muscles by 1995. Six of one and half-a-dozen of the other "little difference" is recorded from 1833. Six-figure in reference to hundreds of thousands (of dollars, etc.) is from 1840. Six feet under "dead" is from 1942. Phrase at sixes and sevens originally was "hazarding all one's chances," first in Chaucer, perhaps from dicing (the original form was on six and seven); it could be a corruption of on cinque and sice, using the French names (which were common in Middle English) for the highest numbers on the dice. Meaning "at odds, in disagreement or confusion" is from 1785, perhaps via a notion of "left unsettled."
Example
- 1. The first six were singularly constructed .
- 2. The six months of talks were cagey and difficult .
- 3. Students either live at home or sleep six to a room .
- 4. I barely got six figures .
- 5. Six months later , it moves back .