Words / A2

SENCH-uh-ree/ˈsentʃəri/

A century is a hundred years: the 21st century, more than a century old. Decade is ten years; millennium is a thousand. We say in the nineteenth century. Century is not a person’s age — that is years old. A cricket century (100 runs) is a specialist meaning you can ignore at A2.

Meaning

A period of one hundred years.

Examples

• “This building is more than a century old.”
• “This church was built in the fifteenth century.”
• “Mobile phones changed life in this century.”

Good to know

a century = 100 years. in the + ordinal + century. Decade = 10 years.

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