century
/ˈsɛn.(t)ʃ(ə.)ɹi/ noun A2- A period of one hundred consecutive years; often specifically a numbered period with conventional start and end dates, e.g., the twentieth century, which stretches from (strictly) 1901 through 2000, or (informally) 1900 through 1999. The first century AD was from 1 to 100.
- A unit in ancient Roman army, originally of one hundred army soldiers as part of a cohort, later of more varied sizes (but typically containing sixty to seventy or eighty) soldiers or other men (guards, police, firemen), commanded by a centurion. · Holonyms: maniple, cohort, legion
- A political division of ancient Rome, meeting in the Centuriate Assembly.
- A hundred things of the same kind; a hundred.
- A hundred runs scored either by a single player in one innings, or by two players in a partnership. · He has scored 44 limited-overs centuries.· They put on a century stand to help their team recover from 57–4 to 198–4.
- A score of one hundred points. · That was his tenth professional century.
- A race a hundred units (as meters, kilometres, miles) in length.
- A banknote in the denomination of one hundred dollars.
Plural centuries
From the library
In the last century, however, four successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler in the days of the Regency.
That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.
There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.”
Some pragmatical seventeenth century lawyer, I suppose.
Learn century in real texts
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