quinzième

Quinzième is the French ordinal form of the number quinze, meaning the fifteenth. It is used to indicate the position of an item in a sequence, to name centuries, chapters, pages, or dates when the full ordinal form is preferred. In everyday writing, the abbreviated form 15e is common, but quinzième remains standard in formal prose.

Etymology and form: Quinzième is derived from the cardinal quinze (fifteen) plus the ordinal suffix -ième. The spelling preserves the original consonant cluster from quinze and the suffix, resulting in quinzième. The form is generally used with masculine and feminine nouns in the same spelling, for example le quinzième chapitre, la quinzième page. When used with a plural noun, the form becomes quinzièmes (les quinzièmes pages).

Pronunciation: Quinzième is pronounced roughly [kɛ̃.zjɛm].

Usage notes: Quinzième appears in contexts such as history and literature to denote the fifteenth century (quinzième siècle), the fifteenth edition (quinzième édition), or the fifteenth amendment in translations of legal or historical texts (quinzième amendement). It is also used to describe positions in ordered lists, rankings, or other sequential labeling, where the explicit, formal form is preferred over the numeric shorthand.