twenty-one

noun

twen·​ty-one ˌtwen-tē-ˈwən 

ˌtwən-

1

: a number that is one more than 20 see Table of Numbers

2

[translation of French vingt-et-un] : blackjack sense 1

twenty-one adjective

twenty-one pronoun, plural in construction

Examples of twenty-one in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

In twenty-one years, tens of thousands of citizens were detained and tortured, more than two hundred were killed, and another two hundred or so were disappeared. —Jon Lee Anderson, New Yorker, 7 Apr. 2025

In May of 2023, about two dozen small paintings were discovered in a box in the attic of a two-hundred-year-old clapboard mansion in Milledgeville, Georgia, where the writer Flannery O’Connor lived between the ages of eight and twenty-one. —Charles Bethea, The New Yorker, 24 Mar. 2025

So Ice was out there with at least twenty, twenty-one guys, all on that one bus. —Kory Grow, Rolling Stone, 23 Mar. 2025

Fourteen Final Four appearances, twenty-one appearances in Elite Eight and 28 in Sweet 16. —Jerry McDonald, The Mercury News, 31 Jan. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1611, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for twenty-one

• aileron
• antiphon
• autobahn
• carillon
• castellan
• celadon
• cephalon
• chitosan
• cynodon
• denouement
• deuteron
• echelon