Old English/Numbers

Introduction: Introduction - Grammar - Orthography - I-mutation
Grammar: Nouns - Pronouns - Articles - Adjectives - Numbers - Verbs - Participles - Adverbs - Conjunctions - Prepositions - Interjections - Appositives - Word Formation -

In Old English, numbers (ġetalu) are almost all recognizably related to those of Modern English, so they shouldn't be too hard to learn for a Modern English speaker.

Cardinal numbers

Cardinal numbers (hēafodġetalu) are used to count and enumerate things, like "one", "two", and "three".

The number one

Ān (“one”) was declined exactly like an ordinary strong adjective:

Ān - "one"
Case	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nominative	ān	ān	ān
Accusative	ān-ne	ān-e	ān
Genitive	ān-es	ān-re	ān-es
Dative	ān-um	ānre	ān-um
Instrumental	ān-e	ān-re	ān-e

Note that ān could be declined weak and follow the noun, and when that happened, it had the meaning of "only", "alone", "no other than".

Two

The declension of “two” was quite irregular:

Tƿēġen - "two"
Case	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nominative	tƿēġen	tƿā	tƿā, tū
Accusative	tƿēġen	tƿā	tƿā, tū
Genitive	tƿēga	tƿēga	tƿēga
Dat./Inst.	tƿām	tƿām	tƿām

As can be seen from the table above, the neuter nominative/accusative could be either tƿā or tū. In poetry, neuter nouns were usually used with tū. However, in prose, they often occurred with tƿā instead, especially in Late West Saxon prose, where tū was almost completely absent.

Three

Þrī - "three"
Case	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nominative	þrī	þrēo	þrēo
Accusative	þrī	þrēo	þrēo
Genitive	þrēora	þrēora	þrēora
Dat. and instr.	þrīm	þrīm	þrīm

Note that the form þrī was only used in the West Saxon dialect. In the other dialects, þrēo was the nominative/accusative form for all three genders.

Four to Nineteen

The numbers from four (fēoƿer) onwards usually weren't declined at all: Þā fēoƿer tīda sind ƿinter, lengten, sumer, and hærfest (“The four seasons are winter, spring, summer, and fall”), Ealle cattas sƿulton eahta sīðum (“All cats have died eight times”). When they were declined, they followed the inflection of plural i-stem nouns: nominative/accusative -e, genitive -a, dative -um. This had a tendency to happen only when they did not immediately precede the quantified noun: On þām mynstre ƿǣron fīf ġebrōðru oþþe sixe (“In the monastery were five [uninflected] monks or six [inflected]”).

fēoƿer - four
fīf - five
siex - six
seofon - seven
eahta - eight
nigon - nine
tīen - ten
endleofan - eleven
tƿelf - twelve
þrēotīne - thirteen
fēoƿertīne - fourteen
fīftīne - fifteen
siextīne - sixteen
seofontīne - seventeen
eahtatīne - eighteen
nigontīne - nineteen

Multiples of Ten

The tens from 20 onwards were formed by combining a smaller numeral with -tiġ: “twenty” is tƿēntiġ (think tƿēġen-tiġ), “thirty” is þrītiġ (*þrī-tiġ), “forty” is fēoƿertiġ (*fēoƿer-tiġ), and so on, as if modern English had twoty, threety, fourty, fivety, etc.

However, that's where the morphology of these numbers stops being intuitive. The prefix hund- is attached to the tens seventy and above, so that “sixty, seventy, eighty” is sixtiġ, hundseofontiġ, hundeahtatiġ. No one knows why this prefix starts with seventy, or why it's even there. Oddly, the tens run past 100 and all the way up to 120, as if modern English had "tenty, eleventy, twelvety." Hence “100, 110, 120” in Old English was hundtēontiġ, hundendleftiġ, hundtƿelftiġ.

Multiples of Ten
20	30	40	50	60	70	80	90	100	110	120
tƿēntiġ	þrītiġ	fēoƿertiġ	fīftiġ	sixtiġ	hundseofontiġ	hundeahtatiġ	hundnigontiġ	hundtēontiġ	hundendleftiġ	hundtƿelftiġ

From 21 to 129, non-round numbers were formed with the phrase "[smaller number] and [larger number]." So twenty-two was tƿā and tƿēntiġ, literally “two and twenty,” while sixty-nine was nigon and sixtiġ, literally “nine and sixty.” This structure is the same as in many modern, sister languages to English such as German.

Numbers 20 and above usually have nouns in genitive case: "fifty feral hogs" is fīftiġ ƿildra sƿīna, literally "fifty of wild hogs."

One hundred

Old English had three words for “hundred”: hund, hundred, and hundtēontiġ. Hund and hundred were mainly used as multiplicands, as in tƿā hund / tƿā hundred (“two hundred”). There was apparently no discernible distinction between hund and hundred or when they were used, except that hund occurs seven times as often as hundred. Meanwhile, hundtēontiġ was mainly used as an augend, as in fēoƿer and hundtēontiġ (“a hundred and four”) or hundtēontiġ and seofon and þrītiġ (“a hundred and thirty-seven”). Hundtēontiġ was also the default expression for exactly one hundred and was used in the counting sequence: ...nigon and hundnigontiġ, hundtēontiġ, ān and hundtēontiġ... (“...ninety-nine, a hundred, a hundred and one...”).

While the default order was "[smaller number] and [larger number]" for the tens from twenty onwards, numerical word order was otherwise very much like modern English, with hundreds coming before tens. Hence 153 was hundtēontiġ and þrēo and fīftiġ (“a hundred and three-and-fifty”) and 1,153 was þūsend and hundtēontiġ and þrēo and fīftiġ, literally “a thousand and one hundred and three-and-fifty.”

Ordinal numbers

Ordinal numbers (endebyrdlīcu ġetalu) are used to rank things in a particular order, like "first", "second", and "third". All ordinal number forms followed weak declension, except for "ōðer ("second"), which was always strong.

In Modern English, for most numbers, we just add the suffix "-th" to the cardinal form of the number to form an ordinal, as in "nine" - "ninth". Similarly, in Old English, the normal basic suffix to form ordinal forms from cardinal numbers was "-þa", but sometimes it varied slightly.

The ordinals for the numbers 1 to 3 were formed unpredictably. They were:

forma - first
ōðer - second (compare Modern English "other")
þridda - third

The ordinals for some of the rest of the "under-twenties" are not always fully predictable. They are:

fēorða - fourth
fīfta - fifth
sixta - sixth
seofoþa - seventh (note that "n" disappeared before the "-þa" suffix)
eahtoþa - eighth
nigoþa - ninth (same thing happens as with "seofoþa")
tēoða - tenth (whence the Modern English word "tithe" - also, same thing as with "seofoþa")
endlefta - eleventh
tƿelfta - twelfth
þrēotēoða - thirteenth (the word "þrēo" plus the word "tēoða")
fēoƿertēoða - fourteenth
fīftēoða - fifteenth
sixtēoða - sixteenth
seofontēoða - seventeenth
eahtatēoða - eighteenth
nigontēoða - nineteenth

The ordinals for the decades are easily formed just by adding the suffix "-oþa" to the normal cardinal form, always. Like this:

tƿēntigoþa - twentieth
þrītigoþa - thirtieth
fēoƿertigoþa - fortieth
fiftigoþa - fiftieth
sixtigoþa - sixtieth
hundseofontigoþa - seventieth
hundeahtatigoþa - eightieth
hundnigontigoþa - ninetieth
hundteontigoþa - hundred/teentieth
hundendleftigoþa - hundred and ten/eleventieth
hundtƿelftigoþa - hundred and twenty/twelftieth