Seventeenth means the number seventeen in a series or sequence, coming after sixteenth and before eighteenth. When you're seventeenth in line for the water fountain, there are sixteen people ahead of you. If your birthday falls on the seventeenth of the month, it's the day after the sixteenth and the day before the eighteenth.

The word can describe position or order: the seventeenth president, the seventeenth chapter in a book, or the seventeenth person to finish a race. In fractions, a seventeenth is one part when something is divided into seventeen equal pieces. If you and sixteen friends share a pizza equally, you each get one seventeenth of it.

People also use seventeenth when talking about centuries. The seventeenth century refers to the 1600s (1601 to 1700), which can be confusing at first. Think of it this way: during the years 1 to 100, people were living in the first century. So the years 1601 to 1700 were the seventeenth century. This was the era when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and when Shakespeare's plays were still being performed in London.