The compound adjective 'ten-story' is a transparent numerical quantifier formed within Modern English. Its first element, 'ten', descends directly from the Old English numeral, which has a stable lineage tracing back to the Proto-Indo-European root 'déḱm̥t', the foundational word for the decimal count. The second element, 'story', has a more figurative journey; it originated from the Latin 'historia' (history, narrative) but, through Medieval Latin usage, came to denote a tier of windows or a floor, possibly because different levels of a building were adorned with painted tales. Thus, the modern term logically combines an ancient number with a semantically shifted word for a level to precisely describe a building's ten-tiered vertical structure.

Structure: ten (number) + story (floor/level) - ten: From Old English 'tēn', 'tīen', from Proto-Germanic 'tehun', from Proto-Indo-European 'déḱm̥t'. Functions as a cardinal number. - story: From Middle English 'storie', from Anglo-Latin 'historia' meaning "picture, story (of a building)", likely from the practice of painting windows with historical narratives. Functions as a noun meaning a floor or level of a building.