number – English noun declension

English noun forms of number

Noun: number
Singularnumber
Pluralnumbers

Sample Sentences

  • Any number of people can be reading from a given repository at a time.
  • There are, in addition to all the red socks, a number that don’t suit me either.
  • The number of malnourished children has decreased.
  • From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much.[…] But viewed from high up in one of the growing number of skyscrapers in Sri Lanka’s capital, it is clear that something extraordinary is happening: China is creating a shipping hub just 200 miles from India’s southern tip. [2013 June 8, “The new masters and commanders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 52:]
  • Number itself importeth not much in armies where the people are of weak courage. [1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC:]
  • Zero, one, −1, 2.5, and pi are all numbers.
  • The number 8 is usually made with a single stroke.
  • The former FBI director James Comey has said it did not occur to him that that the numbers 8647 – which he spotted spelled out in seashells on a beach, and posted on social media – could be interpreted as a call to assassinate the president, as many supporters of Donald Trump have claimed. [2025 May 16, Edward Helmore, “What does ‘8647’ really mean? Not what Trump’s supporters are saying”, in The Guardian:]
  • The equation e#123;i#92;pi#125;#43;1#61;0 includes the most important numbers: 1, 0, #92;pi, i, and e.
  • Horse number 5 won the race.
  • Her passport number is C01X864TN.
  • You can take the number 8 (bus) all the way to the airport.
  • Let's give her a call. Do you have her number handy?
  • I'm definitely interested. Here's my number. Call me back anytime.
  • Rikki, don't lose that number / You don't wanna call nobody else / Send it off in a letter to yourself [1974, “Rikki Don't Lose That Number”, performed by Steely Dan:]
  • “[...] I wonder if you could get hold of him and have him call me here at Interior. I’m in my office, do you have my number?” [2001, E. Forrest Hein, The Ruach Project,, Xulon Press, page 86:]
  • When I agreed to go surfing with him he said, “Great, can I have your number?” Well, I don’t give my number to guys I don’t know. [2007, Lindsey Nicole Isham, No Sex in the City: One Virgin's Confessions on Love, Lust, Dating, and Waiting, Kregel Publications, page 111:]
  • Marsha's work number is 555-8986. [2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)]
  • Adjectives and nouns should agree in gender, number, and case.
  • Griefe brought to numbers cannot be ſo fierce, / For, he tames it, that fetters it in verſe. [a. 1631 (date written), J[ohn] Donne, “The Triple Foole”, in Poems, […] with Elegies on the Authors Death, London: […] M[iles] F[lesher] for Iohn Marriot, […], published 1633, →OCLC, page 204:]
  • As yet a Child, nor yet a Fool to Fame, / I liſp'd in Numbers, for the Numbers came. [1735 January 13 (Gregorian calendar; indicated as 1734), [Alexander] Pope, An Epistle from Mr. Pope, to Dr. Arbuthnot, London: […] J[ohn] Wright for Lawton Gilliver […], →OCLC, page 7, lines 124–125:]
  • For his second number, he sang "The Moon Shines Bright".
  • I include myself in their number.
  • As an association, we demonstrate near-Olympic sang-froid. As I write, the gods are smiling upon us, but in the past decade – not to mince words – two of our number have got divorced, one of us checked into rehab, and all of us have had distressful troubles with teenage kids. [2020 August 22, Robert McCrum, “For ever and a day: why we turn to Shakespeare at times of crisis”, in The Observer:]
  • I laughed. "Don't doubt that. She's a saucy little number." [1968, Janet Burroway, The dancer from the dance: a novel,, Little, Brown, page 40:]
  • "Signorina Jessica," says the maid, a saucy little number, "your father has gone to his prayers and demands that you come to the synagogue at once [...]" [1988, Erica Jong, Serenissima,, Dell, page 214:]
  • He had to focus on the mission, staying alive and getting out, not on the sexy number rubbing up against him. [2005, Denise A. Agnew, Kate Hill, Arianna Hart, By Honor Bound,, Ellora's Cave Publishing, page 207:]
  • The trouble was I was wearing my backless glittering number from the night before underneath, so unless I could persuade the office it was National Fancy Dress Day I was doomed to sweat profusely in bottle blue. [2007, Cesca Martin, Agony Angel: So You Think You've Got Problems...,, Troubador Publishing Ltd, page 134:]
  • "I doubt the sexy number you wore earlier tonight fell from the sky." [2007, Lorelei James, Running with the Devil, Samhain Publishing, Ltd, page 46:]
  • These were the two that Tommy had chosen to collect a debt owed to his family by a dude named Heath who ran numbers out of a grocery store on 131st and Lenox. [2005, K'wan, Hoodlum, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 1:]
  • Back at his place again, Doc rolled a number, put on a late movie, found an old T-shirt, and sat tearing it up into short strips […] [2009, Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice, Vintage, published 2010, page 12:]
  • the latest number of a magazine
  • When, in July, 1897, my father brought home the first number of The Railway Magazine, I little thought that, sixty years later, I should still be reading it, without having missed a single number. [1957 July 26, M. D. Greville, “A Diamond Jubilee of Railway Memories”, in Railway Magazine, page 458:]
  • Despite last week's woes, the Braves still sport numbers that would make Christie Brinkley blush. [1980 May 10, Al King, “Braves travel to New England with reputation”, in The Indiana Gazette:]

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *nem-
3. Proto-Italic *nomezos
4. Latin numerus
5. Anglo-Norman noumbrebor.
6. Middle English nombre
7. English number
8. Inherited from Middle English number, nombre, numbre, noumbre, from Anglo-Norman noumbre, Old French nombre, from Latin numerus (“number”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *nem- (“to distribute, to give, to take”). Compare Saterland Frisian Nummer, Nuumer, West Frisian nûmer, Dutch nummer (“number”), German Nummer (“number”), Danish nummer (“number”), Swedish nummer (“number”), Icelandic númer (“number”). Displaced Middle English ȝetæl and rime; more at tell, tale and rhyme. Distantly related (via Proto-Indo-European) to obsolete English nim (“to take, seize”) and its Germanic cognates (e.g. German nehmen), hence also to numb. See: Middle English Nouns 'number', Middle English Nouns 'number', Latin Nouns 'numerus', Dutch Nouns 'nummer', German Nouns 'Nummer', Danish Nouns 'nummer', Swedish Nouns 'nummer', Icelandic Nouns 'númer', English Nouns 'nim'.