century

Pronunciation: /ˈsɛntʃʊri/

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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 sense 3): from Latin centuria, from centum 'hundred'. 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

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Other

century

noun (plural centuries)

Derivatives

centurial

Origin:

century in other Oxford dictionaries

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