Numbers in English

Numbers in English (or English numerals) are very useful in a lot of different situations. If you want to talk about how old you are, how many cats you have, or even how many beers you drank last night, you need to know the numbers. They are literally everywhere, but before you can use them, you need to know what they are exactly and how to form the larger ones.

On this page, you have an overview of the different numbers and how you can form them. It’s important that you know that this article is about numbers to talk about quantities and not about the order in which things appear.

Numbers from 1 to 20

1	one	11	eleven
2	two	12	twelve
3	three	13	thirteen
4	four	14	fourteen
5	five	15	fifteen
6	six	16	sixteen
7	seven	17	seventeen
8	eight	18	eighteen
9	nine	19	nineteen
10	ten	20	twenty

The table above shows you how to go from 1 to 20. You should study these because most of them are irregular and they are building blocks to form bigger numbers.

0 is a special numeral because it is pronounced in a few different ways.

zero	The numeral ‘0’ is pronounced as zero when you are talking about the number without any context. This can also be the case with phone numbers and decimals.
nought	The British way of saying ‘0’. This one is not really used in the United States.
nill	This one is used to talk about sports results.
o	The numeral ‘0’ can be pronounced as the letter ‘o’ when you’re talking about years or the temperature.

Numbers between 20 and 100

Numbers between 20 and 100 are easy to form. You use the numbers of the tens, followed by a hyphen (-) and a number between 0 and 9. Take a look at the following examples:

32	thirty-two
76	seventy-six
37	thirty-seven
28	twenty-eight
97	ninety-seven
65	sixty-five
44	forty-four
58	fifty-eight
73	seventy-three
81	eighty-one

Pay attention that you use a hyphen (-) between the two words.

Numbers bigger than 100

In order to know how to say numbers bigger than 100, you need to know how to say the hundreds. Those are regular in English.

100	one hundred
200	two hundred
300	three hundred
400	four hundred
500	five hundred
600	six hundred
700	seven hundred
800	eight hundred
900	nine hundred

The thousands are also regular. You need to say the number of the thousands, followed by the word ‘thousand’.

1000	one thousand
2000	two thousand
3000	three thousand
11000	eleven thousand
15000	fifteen thousand
20000	twenty thousand
63000	sixty-three thousand
75000	seventy-five thousand
90000	ninety thousand

When you want to use a number that is not a ten, hundred or thousand, you need to name the different parts. If you are dealing with a number smaller than 1000, you can place ‘and’ between the hundreds and tens, but this is mostly used in British English.

121	one hundred (and) twenty-one
372	three hundred (and) seventy-two
789	seven hundred (and) eighty-nine
1276	one thousand two hundred seventy-six
1765	one thousand seven hundred sixty-five
3475	three thousand four hundred seventy-five
8743	eight thousand seven hundred forty-three
9876	nine thousand eight hundred seventy-six
23678	twenty-three thousand six hundred seventy-eight
65437	sixty-five thousand four hundred thirty-seven
112365	one hundred (and) twelve thousand three hundred sixty-five

Really big numbers

You can see some very big numbers below.

1 000 000	one million
1 000 000 000	one billion
1 000 000 000 000	one trillion

Exercises

• Numbers 1-100 Exercise 1
• Numbers 1-100 Exercise 2
• Numbers 1-100 Exercise 3
• Numbers 1-100 Exercise 4
• Numbers 1-100 Exercise 5
• Numbers 1-100 Exercise 6
• Numbers 1-100 Exercise 7
• Numbers 1-100 Exercise 8
• Numbers 1-100 Exercise 9
• Numbers 1-100 Exercise 10

Related articles

• Dates in English
• Numbers 1-100