Fjerdende

Fjerdende is a term found in Norwegian that refers to the ordinal meaning “the fourth.” It is considered a historical or dialectal variant rather than a standard modern form. In contemporary Bokmål and Nynorsk, the ordinary way to say the fourth is fjerde.

The form fjerdende appears primarily in older texts, regional writings, or stylistic uses that aim for archaism. It is not commonly used in everyday contemporary Norwegian, where fjerde is preferred for most ordinal applications. In some compounds or set phrases, fjerdende may still be encountered in historical quotations or in literature attempting to evoke an older linguistic register.

Etymology and usage notes suggest that fjerdende arises from the root for four and a suffix pattern that was once productive in Norwegian, though the equivalent modern ordinal form has shifted to fjerde. The distinction between fjerdende and fjerde is largely a matter of formality, period, and dialect rather than of meaning.

Relation to related terms: fjerde is the standard ordinal for four; fjerdedel or fjerdedelen refers to a quarter or one fourth as a fraction, where the wording differs from the ordinal fjerdende. In many contexts, fjerdende can be found in historical documents or dialectal texts, while modern usage favors fjerde for ordinal numbering.

See also: fjerde, fjerdedel, fjerdedeler, ordinals in Norwegian, Norwegian language history.