Veintidós

Veintidós is the cardinal numeral that represents the number 22 in Spanish. It is used in counting, ages, quantities, and dates, and can modify nouns or stand in isolation as part of a sentence, for example: tiene veintidós años; el veintidós de diciembre.

Etymology and form: Veintidós is formed from veinti- (a prefix meaning twenty) and dos (two). It is a descendant of the Latin viginti duo. The standard modern spelling writes the word as a single unit, veintidós, with an acute accent on the o to indicate the correct stress of the word.

Orthography and usage: In contemporary Spanish, veintidós is written with a tilde on the o and used without any hyphen. It follows the pattern of other twenty-something numbers, such as veintitrés and veintiséis, which also carry diacritics to preserve pronunciation. When used before a masculine singular noun, forms like veintidós años are common; the word itself remains unchanged. In dates, one might say “el veintidós de julio de 2024.”

Variations and notes: Some older texts or certain informal writings may appear as veintidos or veintidós without the accent, but the normative spelling in modern Spanish is veintidós. Numbers from twenty-one to twenty-nine are typically written as a single word in standard Spanish, with diacritics applied to the affected forms (for example, veintiún, veintidós, veintitrés, veintiséis).

See also: veintiuno, veintitrés, veintiséis, veintinueve.