Ordinal number

From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.

Ordinal numbers (or ordinals) are numbers that show something's order, for example: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th.

Suppose you have four different tee-shirts, and you lay them before you, from left to right.

  • All to the left there is the red tee-shirt
  • Right of that is the blue one
  • Then there is the yellow one
  • And finally, all to the right is your white tee-shirt

If you then start counting the shirts from the left, you would first see the red shirt. So the red shirt is your first tee-shirt. The blue shirt is your second tee-shirt. The yellow shirt is the third one, and the white tee-shirt is the fourth one.

The first, second, third, and fourth in this case are ordinal numbers. They result if you have many objects, and you give them an order (hence 'ordinal'). You then simply count those objects, and give the ordinal numbers to them.

See also 
Cardinal numbers

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