Ordinal form of negative numbers (especially -1, -2, -3)



Ordinal numbers are traditionally considered to begin at 1: i.e., 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.  Yet, in the past 100 years, the word “zeroth” (0th) has begun to be used.


Negative integers seem even more inappropriate as ordinal numbers, but there still are cases where we would like to form things like "minus sixth floor". How is it with -1, -2 and -3?



  • minus first, minus second, minus third


or



  • minus oneth, minus twoth, minus threeth


or maybe a mix of those? "Minus oneth" doesn't sound too awkward to me, might even sound better to some.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

single word requests - What do you call hypothetical inhabitants living on the Moon?