Halved, quartered...what's next?

Question

I was going to quarter my daughter's grapes but decided to cut them into six pieces instead. Did I sixth her grapes? I looked all over the net and couldn't find the answer. What's the proper word? Is there a word for that?

To clarify for those confused by the jump from 4 to 6 instead of 4 to 8, I didn't actually quarter them like I normally would a small grape because these were huge! My goal was to create less of a choking hazard for my kiddo who has DS so I cut them into 6 pieces each. Of all the answers, I'm thinking hexed makes the most sense! Thanks everyone!!

Answer 1

Wiktionary does list "sixth" as a verb meaning "to divide by six." This usage is so rare that I doubt it really qualifies; professionally written dictionaries don't list it.

But you can find very occasional attestations. Here's one usage from The New York Times:

Cold boiled potatoes can be quartered, sixthed or eighthed and deep fried in oil.

One from a blog post on the BBC's website:

Thankfully there are six of us, and a problem sixthed is a much less of a problem.

A rather uncertain attestation from The Martha's Vineyard Times:

I made a small batch, half a container of cherry tomatoes quartered, or sixthed (if that’s a word) [...]

Answer 2

Sometimes there just ain't no such word, whether you're in a new situation (for a new number) or there actually is a word but it is so rare or obsolete that the speaker is creating the word as though it were new.

So 'sixth' or 'eighth' may well be single word verbs for dividing into six (or eight) parts. But the way one would most commonly phrase this situation is as:

I was going to divide my daughter's grapes into sixths.

The noun 'sixths' is constructed very naturally by pluralizing the ordinal, that is, adding 'th' to the number (or 'st' or 'nd' or 'half'/'quarter' as appropriate) for the ordinal, and then 's' for the plural.

The particular verb 'divide' isn't necessary - it could be any similar verb that implies separation but with no indication of the number: eg 'split', 'cut up', 'partition'.

The 'way to say it' then is to convert the 'halve' verb into a verb and prepositional phrase indicating the number:

'(split) (the object being split) into (fractional parts).

It is a separate question entirely on how to pronounce such a word.

Answer 3

Picking up on Alphabet's answer, I found the following additional example for eighth (v.), but nothing higher in count:

Script Breakdown

In order to get to this point, you have to analyse the elements of the film to work out how much each scene will cost.

The script has to be broken down into its parts. ... The first step is to eighth the script out. ... Eighthing a script is subjective ...

Once you have eighthed the script, you then transfer the information about each scene onto a strip of card in preparation for creating the production scheduling board ...

There are fourteen parameters which you need to take into account when scheduling. Each eighthed section of script needs to be analysed to see which of these fourteen elements it contains.
Elliot Grove; Raindance Producers' Lab Lo-To-No Budget Filmmaking (2013)

---

eighth (v.)

To divide by eight
Wiktionary

By coincidence, the example Wiktionary cites is the one above that I found with Google Books. Then again, not much of a coincidence, given the rarity.

---

To third (meaning divide into thirds or reduce to one-third) is rare. The OED's most recent citation is from 1874:

Such a course would have halved or thirded the number of our subscribers.
Furnivall in 10th Rep. Committee E.E.T.S. 16

See also Double is to triple as halve is to ...?

To find trisect (v.) outside the field of geometry is uncommon:

To divide into three usually equal parts
M-W

Transitive. To divide into three equal parts (esp. in Geometry); sometimes gen. to divide into three parts.

1882 Could not I have reduced it a drop a day, or by adding water, have bisected or trisected a drop?
T. De Quincey, Confessions of English Opium-eater 146

1876 We found the dwelling-houses trisected into a sleeping-room, a kitchen, and a store-room.
A. J. Evans, Through Bosnia ii. 48
[OED]

Answer 4

For me to write "I sixthed it" seemed entirely natural, right up until I tried to to proof read it, aloud.

I'm guessing this is probably where many authors do a double-take and wonder if it is or isn't a real word.

To be fair, "fifthed", "sixthed" and "twelfthed" are particularly hard, each with a cluster of two unvoiced sibilants leaving no vocal resonance for a final unvoiced stop consonant. Others like "seventhed" or "ninthed" are a little easier to say out loud. Whether the following word begins with a vowel also matters.

I suspect we have it backwards when we think these look "archaic": prior to universal literacy, I suspect unpronounceable words would have been, at best, an in-joke for the literate, to be avoided in normal writing. But now when much of our personal communication is written, maybe "sixthed" could become popular before people even notice they can't read it aloud. (And to be fair, it's no harder to pronounce than "???" or "🙼" or "🟔" or "🟠🟡🟢🟣🟤🟥🟦🟧🟨🟩🟪🟫".)

As a practical matter, it's really quite easy to eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, or even five-hundred-and-twelfth something, even by hand, by the simple process of repeated halving, so that's clearly not the main reason for low adoption for those terms.