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Spanish Word of the Day Archive
Tuesday February 20, 2007
quinto, adjective:
fifth
Once you’ve mastered the basic numbers in Spanish, it’s useful to get to learn the ordinal numbers such as quinto, fifth. This one is rather different from the number it’s related to, cinco, but thinking of ‘quintets’ and ‘quintuplets’ may help you to remember it.
Ecuador ocupa el quinto lugar.
Ecuador is in fifth place.
en el quinto piso
on the sixth flooron the fifth floor Britain
Una quinta columna - a fifth column - is a phrase that was coined during the Spanish civil war and then came into English from Spanish. It refers to a group of infiltrators or enemy sympathisers in your own ranks.
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