What does fourth mean?
"Fourth" is the ordinal form of four, marking the position that comes after third in any sequence — a finishing place in a race, a chapter in a book, a century on the calendar. It also functions as a noun denoting one of four equal parts of a whole, so that "a fourth of the budget" means twenty-five percent. Musicians use the term for the interval of a fourth, the distance between notes such as C and F. The word carries no emotional connotation; it is simply descriptive and appears everywhere from casual conversation to formal writing and law. Its most celebrated role may be cultural rather than linguistic: in the United States, Independence Day is known simply as "the Fourth of July." Related phrases such as "the fourth estate" (the press) and "breaking the fourth wall" (when performers address the audience directly) show how deeply this modest ordinal has embedded itself in language and popular culture.
One of four equal parts of a whole; a quarter.
"Each heir received a fourth of the estate."
Often written as "one-fourth" or expressed numerically as 1/4.
Coming next after the third in order or position; the ordinal corresponding to the number four.
"This is the fourth edition of the textbook."
In music, an interval spanning four consecutive staff positions, such as C to F.
"The melody opens with a perfect fourth."
Used when referring to multiple quarter-parts, especially in mathematics or dividing shares among people.
"The recipe calls for two fourths of a cup of sugar."
Americans say "the Fourth of July" so often that an entire nation's independence day doubles as the word's most famous appearance — and it's spelled nothing like the similar-sounding "forth."
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of fourth
"Fourth" descends from Old English "fēowereþa" (later "feowertha"), formed from the cardinal number "fēower" (four), whose Germanic root traces back to the same Proto-Indo-European source that produced Latin "quattuor" and its derivative "quartus." That shared ancestry makes "fourth" a distant cousin of words like "quarter" and "quartet," which arrived through Latin and Romance channels. The spelling shifted over the medieval period into the modern "fourth," standardised in English dictionaries from the sixteenth century onward.
Related word forms
How fourth is actually used
"Fourth" is neutral and appears across all registers, from everyday speech to legal and musical notation. In fractions it is sometimes written as "one-fourth" or "a fourth," while in dates and sequences it typically follows a name or number ("the Fourth of July," "Henry IV" read as "the fourth"). British usage traditionally writes ordinals with superscript letters (4th), which both regions now accept.
Easily confused with fourth
"Forth" means forward or onward in movement or direction, while "fourth" refers to the ordinal number four — the two differ only by one letter but have entirely unrelated meanings.