vigésimo

Vigésimo is an ordinal adjective in Spanish and Portuguese meaning “twentieth.” It designates the position of an element in an ordered sequence, coming after the nineteenth and before the twenty-first. In both languages it agrees in gender and number with the noun: vigésimo (masc.), vigésima (fem.), with plural forms vigésimos/vigésimas.

Etymology: vigésimo derives from Latin vicesimus, itself from viginti meaning twenty, with the common Romance-language ordinal suffix -ésimo introduced to form the 20th. The word shares this origin in both Spanish and Portuguese, where the accent mark on the first syllable helps indicate the stressed vowel.

Usage and forms: In Spanish, you typically say el vigésimo día, la vigésima edición, or vigésimo primero (21st) and vigésimo segundo (22nd) for compound ordinals. In Portuguese, examples include o vigésimo dia, a vigésima edição, and vigésimo primeiro (21st) or vigésimo segundo (22nd) when needed in compound forms. The masculine plural is vigésimos, and the feminine plural vigésimas.

Frequency and context: Vigésimo appears in calendars, anniversaries (vigésimo aniversário/ aniversario), scholarly and literary references, and when enumerating items beyond the twentieth position. It also forms part of larger ordinal sequences such as “vigésimo primeiro,” “vigésimo segundo,” and so on, to denote subsequent ranks.

See also: ordinal numbers, numbers in Romance languages, Latin origins of numerals.