seventeen

Seventeen is the cardinal number that comes after sixteen and before eighteen. It is used when counting, naming an amount, giving an age, or talking about something with the number 17. In everyday English, it appears in simple phrases such as "seventeen years," "seventeen people," or "page seventeen."

The word can describe a number itself or a group of 17 things or people, depending on the sentence. It is most often used in a direct, practical way, though it can also carry a mild sense of youth when it refers to someone's age.

Seventeen is the English word for the number 17. It names a quantity that is one more than sixteen and one less than eighteen. As a cardinal number, it answers the question "how many?" and is common in counting, dates, ages, prices, scores, and lists. You might see it in sentences like "There are seventeen chairs in the room" or "She is seventeen years old."

The word is usually straightforward and literal. It can point to an exact amount, as in "seventeen books," or identify something by number, as in "number seventeen" or "chapter seventeen." In speech and writing, it is one of the basic number words that learners meet early because it is useful in everyday situations.

When it refers to age, seventeen can also suggest the final stage of the teen years before adulthood, so it sometimes carries a quiet narrative feeling of youth, change, or expectation. Still, that is a secondary sense. Its main job in English is simple and clear: it names the number 17.