Century: A Hundred Years, and Why the Numbers Never Match
A century is a hundred years. The confusing part is the counting: the twentieth century covers the 1900s, because there was no year zero.
A century is any period of a hundred years, and also one of the numbered blocks we divide history into. The mismatch trips everyone up: the twentieth century ran from 1901 to 2000, because counting started at year one and not at zero.
- A period of a hundred years. *Half a century ago.*
- A numbered historical period. *Nineteenth-century literature.*
- A hundred runs in cricket. *He scored a century before lunch.*
- A Roman army unit. *A century of eighty men.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | century | The last century. |
| Plural | centuries | Over the centuries. |
| Adjective | centuries-old | A centuries-old tradition. |
| Person | centurion | A Roman centurion. |
| Related | millennium | The new millennium. |
How it is used in a sentence
- The building dates from the sixteenth century.So the 1500s — always one number higher than the digits.
- Nineteenth-century novels were often published in parts.Hyphenated before a noun.
- She reached her century off ninety balls.Cricket — a hundred runs by one batter.
Which years belong to which century
- First century — years 1 to 100
- Nineteenth century — 1801 to 1900, the 1800s
- Twentieth century — 1901 to 2000, the 1900s
- Twenty-first century — 2001 to 2100, the 2000s
- This is why the millennium was formally celebrated at the start of 2001, and informally a year earlier
From Latin *centuria*, a group of a hundred, from *centum*, hundred. The Roman century was a military unit of around eighty men rather than exactly a hundred, so the word was already approximate two thousand years ago.
Why is the 1800s the nineteenth century?
Because the first century was years 1 to 100. Each block of a hundred is therefore numbered one higher than its leading digits.
Should century be capitalised?
No. Write nineteenth century in lowercase, and hyphenate it only when it comes before a noun.