Does "five hundredth" mean 0.05 or 1/500?

Question

What does "five hundredth of a second" mean?

To me, "five hundredth" means 1/500 or 0.002. But I've seen people use it to mean 0.05 in sports (e.g. Athlete won the 100m sprint by five hundredth of a second). I think 0.05 should really be "five one-hundredth". Which is correct?

Note we don't have this problem in the 'tenth' magnitude, as "five tenth" and "fiftieth" are distinct.

DJ Far · Accepted Answer

I think what they are actually saying in sports is "he won by 5 hundredths of a second", meaning 5 one-hundredths of a second, not one five-hundredth of a second.

You have to listen carefully sometimes to hear the 's' at the end.

Mike Scott · Answer

"Five hundredth" doesn't mean anything; it's not well-formed English. "One five-hundredth" means 0.002 and "five hundredths" means 0.05.

user147725 · Answer

'To clarify even further, 1/500 is 'one five-hundredth, .05 is 'five one-hundredths', and 'five hundredth' stands for the position of the 500th item that is being counted.

jkdev · Answer

"Five hundredth of a second" should be plural, "Five hundredths of a second" (5/100 seconds or 0.05 seconds).

Ordinal numbers: 100th = one hundredth... 200th = two hundredth... 500th = five hundredth.

Fractions: 1/100 = one one-hundredth... 1/200 = one two-hundredth... 1/500 = one five-hundredth.

So 5/100 is "five one-hundredths."

But it can also be "five hundredths," because "a hundred" is often considered a synonym for "one hundred."

And if people don't pronounce the final "s" clearly, then "five hundredths" sounds like "five hundredth."

So there you go.

jimalton · Answer

The first commenter, Tim, got it right - the OP either misheard "five hundredth of a second", or the speaker of that phrase got it wrong: it is singular "one hundredth of a second" but plural "five hundredths of a second", i.e. 0.05.

A five hundredth (1/500) is singular, and though it is numerically equal to 0.002, that number would be uttered as "two thousandths"; and 0.004 would be uttered as "four thousandths", not "two five hundredths", since 99.99% of people wouldn't, on the spur of the moment (including me), either make, or bother to make, the equivalency, since we commonly talk about tenths and hundredths and thousandths, not a five hundredth.

As others have pointed out, you would typically only talk about a five hundredth if you were talking about an item from among five hundred items; but what if you were to talk about multiples from the five hundred items? As Jasen asked and Zack answered, you have to be careful. To be consistent, "twenty five hundredths" would have to mean, arithmetically, 25 of 0.01, or 0.25; but if we mean 20 of 1/500 then we'd have to write "twenty five-hundredths"; and, to be consistent and clear, perhaps 1/500 should also be written as "a/one five-hundredth".

Does "five hundredth" mean 0.05 or 1/500?

5 Answers

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question