Italian Ordinal Numbers: How to Say First, Second, Third in Italian

Ordinal numbers in Italian — first, second, third, and so on — are used constantly: floors of a building, dates, rankings, century names, chapters, sports results, and almost every kind of sequencing. The good news is that from eleventh onwards, they follow a perfectly regular pattern. The challenge is the first ten, which are mostly irregular and need to be learned individually — but since you will use primo, secondo, and terzo every single day, they will stick fast.

Italian ordinal numbers are adjectives, which means they agree in gender and number with the noun they describe. So 'primo' (masculine singular) becomes 'prima' (feminine singular), 'primi' (masculine plural), or 'prime' (feminine plural). This applies to all ordinal numbers, regular and irregular alike.

From eleventh onwards, the pattern is simple: take the cardinal number, drop the final vowel if it ends in a vowel, and add '-esimo' (or '-esima', '-esimi', '-esime' for agreement). For example: undici → undicesimo (eleventh), venti → ventesimo (twentieth), cento → centesimo (hundredth).

Note that numbers ending in '-tre' (like ventitré, trentatré) keep the accent: ventitrésimo, trentatrésimo. And numbers ending in '-sei' (like ventisei) drop the final vowel normally: ventisei → ventiseiesimo.

Italian century labels are capitalised and used extensively in art history and cultural writing. 'Il Rinascimento fiorì nel Quattrocento e nel Cinquecento' (The Renaissance flourished in the 1400s and 1500s). 'La musica del Settecento' (18th-century music). Understanding these labels unlocks enormous amounts of Italian cultural reference.