Etymologically
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century

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈsen.tʃər.i/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin centuria (“a group of a hundred; a company of a hundred men”),[2][3][4] irregularly from centum (“hundred”),[5][2] formed on the analogy of decuria (“a company of ten”).[4] Latin centum goes back to Proto-Indo-European *dekm̥ (“ten”), and is related to English hundred.[3][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A Roman measure of land: before 1398, in Trevisa's translation of Bartholomew;[2] a division of the Roman army of about a hundred men is from about 1450[2] (the OED's first quotation is from 1533).[6]

Semantic evolution

In the late 16th century the word came to mean any group of a hundred things,[2][6] as in Shakespeare's “a century of prayers” in Cymbeline.[7][2] Latin centuria was not used of a hundred years, for which saeculum was the word.[4] The phrase a century of years is from the 1620s (1626),[4][6] and, shortened, century alone came to mean a period of a hundred years, before 1638[2] or by the 1650s.[4] The older general sense survives in cricket, where a century is a score of a hundred runs.[4][7] In American slang a century was a hundred dollars, from 1859.[6] The century plant, thought to flower only after a hundred years, is from 1843.[4]

Timeline

  • before 1398 – a measure of land.[2]
  • c. 1450 – a Roman army unit.[2]
  • 1598 – a group of a hundred.[6]
  • 1626 – a century of years.[6]
  • before 1638 – a hundred years.[2]
  • 1843 – century plant.[4]
  • 1859 – a hundred dollars (slang).[6]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. A period of a hundred years.
  2. Each of the hundred-year periods counted from the traditional date of the birth of Christ: the 19th century.
  3. (cricket) A score of a hundred runs by one batsman.
  4. (Roman history) A unit of the Roman army of about a hundred men, commanded by a centurion.
  5. (Roman history) One of the 193 voting divisions of the Roman people.

Word family

  • centurylong
  • centurial
  • centuried
  • half-century
  • century plant

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press