CENTURY • DICTIONARY ONE.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

... one of the greatest men of the last century. They have had the courage to make his life interesting by the little details which make us know and love him; but how many details have they felt obliged to omit which might have made us know and love ...

— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... had been before they had ever parted. But, alas! though the heart be warm and generous, the eye is a merciless critic. And the man who had moved on the wide arena of the world, whose mind had housed the large thoughts of this century, and expanded with its invigorating breath—was he to blame because he had unconsciously outgrown his old provincial self, and could no ...

— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... are to keep it, will you hate me if, some day—when we are less sad—I get pleasure from it? I sha'n't be able to help it. When we were at La Verna, I felt that you ought to have been born in the thirteenth century, that you were really meant to wed poverty and follow St. Francis. But now you have got to be horribly, hopelessly rich. And I, all the time, am a worldling, and a modern. What you'll suffer from, ...

— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... constantly looked at him, and did whatever she thought would please him. She learnt with surprise that her husband was on the high road to becoming one of the princes of industry—that great power of the century. And when she learnt, accidentally from her brother, that she herself had had no dowry, she said, "I must win him back, ...

— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... saint of Naples, suffered martyrdom about the end of the third century. When he was beheaded, a pious lady secured a small quantity of his blood, which, report says, has been preserved in a bottle ever since, without losing a grain of its weight. The blood is usually congealed, but when brought near the saint's carefully ...

— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

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