mehrstelligen

Mehrstelligen is a German adjective used to describe numbers that consist of more than one digit. The term is commonly combined with nouns such as Zahl (number) or Ziffern (digits), yielding phrases like eine mehrstellige Zahl or mehrstellige Zahlen. The opposite, einstelligen, refers to single-digit numbers, i.e., numbers from 0 to 9 in standard decimal notation.

In practice, mehrstelligen numbers include all two-digit, three-digit, and higher-digit numbers. For example, 12 and 99 are two-digit (mehrstellige), while 100 and 2375 are three- and four-digit respectively. In educational contexts, distinguishing between einstellige and mehrstellige numbers helps learners understand place value and decimal notation. When counting digits, the sign of a number is not considered a digit, so negative numbers such as -42 are described as mehrstellige numbers if one counts the digits of their absolute value.

Grammatically, mehrstelligen appears as an inflected form of mehrstellig, used to agree with number, gender, and case. For instance: die mehrstelligen Zahlen (nominative plural), der mehrstelligen Zahl (genitive singular). The underlying concept derives from the terms mehr (more) and Stelle (position or digit), reflecting that such numbers have multiple digit positions in the decimal system. In broader mathematics and computing, the idea of digit count underpins algorithms for digit extraction, range classification, and number representation.