century

Pronunciation: /ˈsɛntʃʊri/

Translate century | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish

Definition of century

noun (plural centuries)

1a period of one hundred years:a century ago most people walked to work
a period of a hundred years reckoned from the traditional date of the birth of Christ:the fifteenth century [as modifier]:a twentieth-century lifestyle

2a score of a hundred in a sporting event, especially a batsman’s score of a hundred runs in cricket: he scored the only century of the tour

3a company in the ancient Roman army, originally of a hundred men.
an ancient Roman political division for voting.

Derivatives

centurial

Origin:

late Middle English (in century (sense 3)): from Latin centuria, from centum 'hundred'. century (sense 1) dates from the early 17th century

1 Strictly speaking, centuries run from 01 to 100, meaning that the new century begins on the first day of the year 01 (i.e. 1 January 1901, 1 January 2001, etc.). In practice and in popular perception, however, the new century is held to begin when the significant digits in the date change, e.g. on 1 January 2000, when 1999 became 2000. 2 Since the 1st century ran from the year 1 to the year 100, the ordinal number (i.e. second, third, fourth, etc.) used to denote the century will always be one digit higher than the corresponding cardinal digit(s). Thus, 1066 is a date in the 11th century, 1542 is a date in the 16th century, and so on.

century in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of century in the US English dictionary

Subscriber login

Library card login

Other

century

noun (plural centuries)

Derivatives

centurial

Origin:

century in other Oxford dictionaries

Nearby words

More results for century

Word of the day

merrythought