ten
/tɛn/ noun C1- A set or group with ten elements. · We divided the chocolates into tens to hand out to Hallowe'en visitors.
- 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.· tens of thousands of voters
- A card in a given suit with a value of ten.
- A denomination of currency, such as a banknote, with a value of ten units. · Can you give me two tens for this twenty?
- A perfect specimen, (particularly) a physically attractive person.
- A high level of intensity.
- The act of rowing ten strokes flat out.
Plural tens
From the library
“Your orders do not forbid your telling me what I must know in ten minutes, in half an hour, or an hour.
They waited upwards of ten minutes.
I have had ten or twelve sailors under me, and if you question them, they will tell you that they love and respect me, not as a father, for I am too young, but as an elder brother.”
The emperor, now king of the petty Island of Elba, after having held sovereign sway over one-half of the world, counting as his subjects a small population of five or six thousand souls,—after having been accustomed to hear the “Vive Napoléons” of a hundred and twenty millions of human beings, uttered in ten different languages,—was looked upon here as a ruined man, separated forever from any fresh connection with France or claim to her throne.
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