century
noun
Simple meaning
A hundred things of the same kind.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sehnchereeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsɛntʃɚi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A hundred things of the same kind; a hundred.
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.
cricket
A hundred runs scored either by a single player in one innings, or by two players in a partnership.
A political division of ancient Rome, meeting in the Centuriate Assembly.
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.
usinformal
A banknote in the denomination of one hundred dollars.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A hundred things of the same kind; a hundred.
Used this way, century is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use century
- “This old house has stood here for over a century.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Other combinations
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Tropical American plants with basal rosettes of fibrous sword-shaped leaves and flowers in tall spikes.
A period of 50 years.
A period of 25 years.
The period from about ten years before to ten years after a new century.
The century from 1901 to 2000.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.