CENTURY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Century

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/sˈɛntʃəri/ Listen

noun

Century n. (pl. centuries)

1.

A hundred; as, a century of sonnets; an aggregate of a hundred things. (Archaic.) "And on it said a century of prayers."

2.

A period of a hundred years; as, this event took place over two centuries ago. Note: Century, in the reckoning of time, although often used in a general way of any series of hundred consecutive years (as, a century of temperance work), usually signifies a division of the Christian era, consisting of a period of one hundred years ending with the hundredth year from which it is named; as, the first century (a. d. 1-100 inclusive); the seventh century (a.d. 601-700); the eighteenth century (a.d. 1701-1800). With words or phrases connecting it with some other system of chronology it is used of similar division of those eras; as, the first century of Rome (A.U.C. 1-100).

3.

(Rom. Antiq.)

(a)

A division of the Roman people formed according to their property, for the purpose of voting for civil officers.

(b)

One of sixty companies into which a legion of the army was divided. It was Commanded by a centurion.

Century plant (Bot.), the Agave Americana, formerly supposed to flower but once in a century; hence the name. See Agave.

The Magdeburg Centuries, an ecclesiastical history of the first thirteen centuries, arranged in thirteen volumes, compiled in the 16th century by Protestant scholars at Magdeburg.

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Etymology of 'Century'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Century" Quotes from Famous Books

... Irresistible authority seemed to go with the word that sent him forth, and rightly so, for behind that word lay the full weight of Great Britain's mighty empire. It was Cameron's first experience of the North West Mounted Police, that famous corps of frontier riders who for more than a quarter of a century have ridden the marches of Great Britain's territories in the far northwest land, keeping intact the Pax Britannica amid the wild turmoil of pioneer days. To the North West Mounted Police and to the pioneer missionary it is due that Canada has never had within her borders ...

— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... In certain regions which devoted themselves to baby-farming the mortality among the nurslings was fifty per cent; in the best of them it was forty, and seventy in the worst. It was calculated that in one century seventeen millions of nurslings had died. Over a long period the mortality had remained at from one hundred to one hundred and twenty thousand per annum. The most deadly reigns, the greatest butcheries of the most terrible conquerors, had never resulted in such massacre. ...

— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... title their sycophancy could bestow and his own fatuity accept—Le Roi Soleil, the Sun-King—makes him what indeed he is: a king of opera bouffe. There is about him at times something almost reminiscent of the Court buffoons of a century before, who puffed themselves out with mock pride, and aped a sort of sovereignty to excite laughter; with this difference, however, that in his own case it was not intended to ...

— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... fame, happiness, and ease was upon the entire group, but in an instant everything was to be changed with the blinding swiftness of enchantment. Quick death was to come on the central figure of that company—the central figure, we believe, of the great and good men of the century. Over all the rest the blackest fates hovered menacingly— fates from which a mother might pray that kindly death would save her children in their infancy. One was to wander with the stain of murder on his soul, with the curses of a world upon ...

— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... had the case of the United States improved, when winter put an end to most operations on the northern frontier. As in the Civil War a half century later, so in 1812, the power of the water over the issues of the land not only was not comprehended by the average official, but was incomprehensible to him. Armstrong in January, and Hull in March, had insisted upon a condition that should ...

— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

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