fifth

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   position five in a countable series of things

   Their team came in fifth out of several hundred entries.

2. 2
   adj

   The ordinal form of the number five.

   On Friday, at a former Michelin factory in the north-east of the city, the finishing touches were being put in place for the fifth Dundee design festival, which opens on Monday.

3. 3
   noun

   The musical interval between one note and another five scale degrees higher (the fifth note in a scale)

   Now I've heard there was a secret chord / That David played, and it pleased the Lord / But you don't really care for music, do ya? / It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth

4. 4
   verb

   To sing in the fifth voice in a polyphonic melody.

   Another extension of strict organum is 'fifthing'. Fifthing is a note-against- note method of creating a two-part texture by improvising a second voice over the given tune, starting and ending each musical phrase at the octave and proceeding mainly in fifths above the tune at others times.

5. 5
   verb

   To support something fifth, after four others have already done so.

   A lisping young “Soundings,” or master’s assistant, sung out “I thecond the mothon,” instantly transferring his beer to our hero’s face. In short the resolution was thirded, fourthed, fifthed, and sixthed, all following suit with the swipes:[…]

6. 6
   verb

   To divide by five.

   3/5 has been through fifthing. 2/3 has been through thirding. Therefore, 3/5 now needs thirding and 2/3 needs fifthing

7. 7
   name

   Fifth Avenue.

   […] besides marrying Nate Archibald and living happily every after in the ivy-covered brick town house just off Fifth that she already had picked out

8. 8
   adj

   coming next after the fourth and just before the sixth in position

Etymology

PIE word *pénkʷe From Middle English fifthe, fifte, fift, from Old English fīfta (“fifth”), from Proto-Germanic *fimftô (“fifth”) or *femftô, equivalent to five + -th (ordinal suffix). Cognate with Scots fift, fyft (“fifth”), North Frisian fyfde (“fifth”), West Frisian fyfde (“fifth”), Dutch vijfde (“fifth”), Low German fifte, föfte, füfte (“fifth”), German fünfte (“fifth”), Danish femte (“fifth”), Swedish femte (“fifth”), Icelandic fimmta (“fifth”).