vinte

Vinte is the Portuguese word for the number twenty. It serves as the cardinal numeral in both European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese and is used in counting, ages, dates when numbers are spelled out, and various measurements. The form is employed as the base for constructing higher numbers in two-digit figures, with the usual pattern of combining tens and units in written Portuguese, such as “vinte e um” for 21 or “vinte e dois” for 22.

Etymology and cognates: Vinte derives from Latin viginti, and shows clear cognates across Romance languages. Related terms include Spanish veinte, French vingt, Italian venti, and Catalan vint, reflecting a shared historical development of the numeral in the Romance language family.

Usage notes: In ordinary writing, numbers from twenty-one to twenty-nine are typically rendered as “vinte e [unit]” (for example, “vinte e três” for 23). Exact multiples of ten are simply “vinte,” “trinta,” “trinta e cinco” uses the same pattern as other tens plus units. For dates, both “dia vinte de março” (written-out form) and the numeric form “dia 20 de março” are common, with the choice depending on style and formality. In percentages, the standard phrasing is “vinte por cento” or abbreviated as “20%.”

In contemporary usage, the term appears across everyday language, literature, and media as the straightforward representation of the number 20. The word also forms the basis for the corresponding ordinal, vigésimo, meaning twentieth. See also viginti, veinte, vingt, venti for related term histories in Romance languages.