Century Information
A century (from the Latin centum, meaning one hundred) is one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages (e.g. "the 7th century AD/CE").
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Start and end in the Gregorian Calendar
According to the Gregorian calendar, the 1st century AD/CE started on January 1, 1 and ended on December 31, 100. The 2nd century started at year 101, the 3rd at 201, etc. The n-th century started/will start on the year (100×n)-99 and ends in 100×n . A century will only include one year, the centennial year, that starts with the century's number (e.g. 1900 is the final year in the 19th century).
1st century BC and AD
There is no "zeroth century" in between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD. Also, there is no year 0 AD.[1] The Julian calendar "jumps" from 1 BC to 1 AD. The first century BC includes the years 100 BC to 1 BC. Other centuries BC follow the same pattern.
Dating units in other calendar systems
Besides the Gregorian calendar, the Julian calendar, the Aztec calendar, and the Hindu calendar have cycles of years which are used to delineate whole time periods; the Hindu calendar, in particular, summarizes its years into groups of 60, while the Aztec calendar considers groups of 52.
Centuries in astronomical year numbering
Astronomical year numbering, used by astronomers, includes a year zero . Consequently, the 1st century in these calendars may designate the years 0 to 99 as the 1st century, years 100 to 199 as the second etc. However, in order to regard 2000 as the first year of the 21st century according to the astronomical year numbering, the astronomical year 0 has to correspond to the Gregorian year 1 BC.
Alternative naming systems
In Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish, centuries are typically not named ordinally, but according to the hundreds part of the year, and consequently centuries start at even multiples of 100. For example, Swedish nittonhundratalet (or 1900-talet), Danish and Norwegian nittenhundredetallet (or 1900-tallet) and Finnish tuhatyhdeksänsataaluku (or 1900-luku) refer unambiguously to the years 1900–1999. The same system is used informally in English. For example, the years 1900–1999 are sometimes referred to as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). This is similar to the English decade names (1980s, meaning the years 1980–1989).
Notes
- ^ Two separate systems that also do not use religious titles, the astronomical system and the ISO 8601 standard do use a year zero. The year 1 BC (identical to the year 1 BC) is represented as 0 in the astronomical system, and as 0000 in ISO 8601. Presently, ISO 8601 dating requires usage of the Gregorian calendar for all dates, however, whereas astronomical dating and Common Era dating allow usage of the Julian calendar for dates before 1582 AD.
References
- The Battle of the Centuries, Ruth Freitag, U.S. Government Printing Office. Available from the Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250- 7954. Cite stock no. 030-001-00153-9.
See also
| Look up century in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
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Noun
century (plural centuries)- A period of 100 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, originally of 100 army soldiers as part of a cohort, later of more varied sizes (but typically containing 60 to 70 or 80) soldiers or other men (guards, police, firemen), commanded by a centurion.
- A political division of ancient Rome, meeting in the Centuriate Assembly.
- (archaic) A hundred things; a hundred.
- 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, II.4.2.i:
- 'tis the subject of whole books: I might cite a century of authors pro and con.
- 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, II.4.2.i:
- (cricket) A hundred runs scored either by a single player in one innings, or by two players in a partnership.
- (US, cycling) A ride 100 miles in length.
- (US, informal) A banknote in the denomination of one hundred dollars.