token – English noun declension

English noun forms of token

Noun: token
Singulartoken
Pluraltokens

Sample Sentences

  • According to the Bible, the rainbow is a token of God's covenant with Noah.
  • Please accept this bustier as a token of our time together.
  • Subway tokens are being replaced by magnetic cards.
  • A book token is the easiest option for a Christmas gift.
  • Everyone pick a token (hat, wheelbarrow, thimble, etc.) and place it on the Start square.
  • His apology was no more than a token.
  • New York Philharmonic has a token of one Negro. The Pittsburgh Symphony ranks high with three tokens. Cleveland has one, and other major symphony orchestras such as Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago still say, "Get back!" [1968, Ave Maria, volume 108, page 17:]
  • Five women were tokens on both counts. Comparing racial tokens to nontokens, tokens reported significantly less favorable interpersonal interactions with their White male colleagues. [2005, Morris Fromkin, edited by Peter G. Watson-Boone, The Quest for Social Justice III, page 61:]
  • They were tokens, however: the majority of oppressed people will not experience these benefits. Tokens were used to pacify the masses and provide the mirage that racism was no longer a factor [2013, Robert J. Durán, Gang Life in Two Cities: An Insider's Journey, page 208:]
  • Women and racial minorities (e.g., blacks, Hispanics, Asians) often are tokens in organizations or in organizational groups (e.g., departments, boards of directors, management). [2013, Vicki Smith, Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia, page 485:]
  • Say, by this token, I desire his company. [c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene iii]:]
  • And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 3:12:]
  • For each lexeme, the scanner creates a small data package known as a token and passes this data package on to the parser. [2004, Randall Hyde, Write Great Code: Understanding the Machine, page 68:]
  • […]One judge cited expert testimony that showed that Llama could reproduce no more than 50 tokens from the plaintiffs’ books, though research has since been published that proves otherwise. [2026 January 9, Alex Reisner, “AI’s Memorization Crisis”, in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor, The Atlantic, Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC:]
  • At some tech companies, including Meta and OpenAI, employees compete on internal leaderboards that show how many tokens — the atomic unit of A.I. use, roughly equivalent to a word fragment — each worker consumes, two people familiar with those companies’ practices said. [2026 March 20, Kevin Roose, “More! More! More! Tech Workers Max Out Their A.I. Use.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:]
  • Whiplash around spending on “tokens,” the units of computing power in which A.I. is sold, is hitting engineering teams and board rooms. […] There is no consensus on how much energy a token requires, which model is best to perform a given task or how many tokens it should take. [2026 August 3, Lydia DePillis, “What Are Companies Getting for All That A.I. Spending?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:]
  • non-fungible token
  • The NFT rush in 2021 saw sale after sale of the novel digital assets hit staggering sums. A collection of images by the visual artist Beeple sold for $69m, the main token for the “play to earn” video game Axie Infinity hit a total value of $9.75bn and Coca-Cola raised more than $575,000 from selling items such as a customised jacket to be worn in the metaverse. [2022 May 6, Alex Hern, Dan Milmo, “NFTs: the great rush may be over – but are they in actual decline?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:]
  • In May 2025, the president hosted the 220 largest buyers of $Trump and held a private “reception” for the largest 25 buyers, who spent around $148m on $Trump tokens. [2026 March 22, Adam Willems, “New crypto regulations likely to be big favor to the Trump family, industry insiders say”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:]
  • However, note the token ontology, ranked the 15ᵗʰ most frequent token in our ontology corpus, occurs 1940 times out of 336,311 tokens, but ontology only occurs 52 times in the BNC – the ratio of two relative frequencies is 10895. [2007, Khurshid Ahmad, “Artificial Ontologies and Real Thoughts: Populating the Semantic Web?”, in Roberto Basili, Maria Teresa Pazienza, editors, AI*IA 2007: Artificial Intelligence and Human-Oriented Computing, Springer-Verlag, page 10:]
  • Like the fearful tokens of the plague, Are mere fore-runners of their ends. [1610–1614, John Fletcher, “The Tragedie of Valentinian”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act V, scene iv:]
  • But the coal-owner refuses to pay for a corf or tub simply on the ground that it contains too little weight, or that it contains “softs” instead of all “hards,”—a refusal technically known by its symbol as “hanging the motties," or by a bolder metaphor as “hanging the hutches,”—the “motties,” or tokens peculliar to the collier who sends up the corf. being hung up, if satisfactory, on the proper “motty-board peg,” if not so, on the “death-board peg;” and it is asserted that “at some collieries as many as 60 or 70 each day, worth to the collier from 6d. to 8. each, are taken from them in this manner.” [1864 August 6, “Miners and Their Grievances”, in The Spectator, volume 37, number 1884, page 902:]
  • But worse still was the practice of defrauding them of their earnings, for as their “tokens” were put on to the outside of the tubs it often happened that hundreds were taken off and thrown away; so that they often found, to their exceeding chagrin, when they came to bank, that after having put up with all the abuse and ill-treatment in the mine they had got little or nothing for working all day. [1873, Richard Fynes, The Miners of Northumberland and Durham, page 110:]
  • The “token” is simply a small piece of leather with a given number upon it, and as the colliers work in pairs--not at the same time, but in succession, the one man taking the “fore shift,” the other the “back shift,”—each pair has a specific number, and round the “token” cabin are ranged hooks also numbered to correspond with the tokens the colliers take down with them into the mine; every tub laden with coal that comes to bank has in it one of these “tokens,” and the business of token-keeper is to secure these and lodge them upon their corresponding hooks, so that at the end of each shift, or day of labour, the colliers knows how many tubs he has sent “to bank”. [1877, “Northern Industries”, in The Primitive Methodist Magazine, page 172:]
  • Although splitting a single-line section into two might seem a simple solution, Williams adds that creating another location where drivers have to get out of the cab and walk to a cabinet to exchange tokens before a train can proceed will further slow down the service: "There must be a better option in the 21st century than putting in an additional token machine." [2020 January 2, Graeme Pickering, “Fuelling the changes on Teesside rails”, in Rail, page 61:]

Etymology

1. From Middle English token, taken, from Old English tācn (“sign, symbol”), from Proto-West Germanic *taikn, from Proto-Germanic *taikną (“indicator, symbol, sign”), from Proto-Indo-European *deyḱ- (“to show, instruct, teach”) with Germanic *k rather than *h by Kluge's law.
2. Cognate with Scots takin, taiken (“token, sign”), Saterland Frisian Teken (“sign, symbol”), West Frisian teken (“sign, mark, symbol”), Dutch teken (“sign, indication, symbol”), German Low German Teken (“sign, symbol”), German Zeichen (“sign, token”), Danish tegn (“sign, token, character”), Swedish tecken (“sign, indication”), Faroese tekn, tekin (“mark, sign, signal”), Icelandic teikn (“sign, omen”), Icelandic tákn (“symbol”).
3. The verb is from Middle English toknen, from Old English tācnian. See: Middle English Nouns 'token', Dutch Nouns 'teken', German Nouns 'Zeichen', Danish Nouns 'tegn', Swedish Nouns 'tecken', Faroese Nouns 'tekn', Icelandic Nouns 'teikn', Icelandic Nouns 'tákn', Old English Nouns 'tācnian'.

Verbs referencing "token"

Dutch Nouns teken, Dutch Nouns token, Swedish Nouns tecken, Latin Nouns digitus, German Nouns Zeichen, Faroese Nouns tekin, Finnish Nouns tokeni, Faroese Nouns tekn, Danish Nouns tegn, German Nouns Token.