It takes two to turn an ordinal indicator into something special We’re sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later. Dismiss Normal text size Advertisement First, let’s look at 1st, or more the tail that takes one from numeral to ordinal. Two does a matching trick, moving from 2 to 2nd, just as bronze gets 3rd, each digit demanding a different suffix to extend the ongoing sequence. Jenny Edwards, daydreaming at a party, noted the quirk while gazing at the birthday candles. She wondered if English had a word for these vowel-free clusters. Boringly, the answer points to ordinal indicator, as colourless a name as pedestrian crossing or tin-opener: phrases that starkly say what they mean. Honestly, sometimes English misses a trick.