--- title: Decades, centuries and millennia — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Decades, centuries and millennia», a lesson of the world course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Big stretches of time have names: a decade is 10 years, a century 100 years and a millennium 1,000 years (two or more are millennia). --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [World](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/) / Decades, centuries and millennia # Decades, centuries and millennia Lesson 124 of the world course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/0/) — Big stretches of time have names: a decade is 10 years, a century 100 years and a millennium 1,000 years (two or more are millennia). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/1/) — "The eighties" means the decade from 1980 to 1989, not 80 years ago, and "the noughties" means 2000 to 2009. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/2/) — Centuries are counted from year 1, so the 1st century was years 1 to 100, and the century's number is one more than its hundreds: the 1800s are roughly the 19th century, and we live in the 21st, from 2001 to 2100. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/3/) — That's why a picky grandad says the new millennium really began in 2001, not at the huge parties of 2000. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/4/) — Lifetimes help you feel big times. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/5/) — A century is about 4 generations: you, your mum, your nan and your great-nan. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/6/) — Some people do live to 100, and Britain has about 15,000 of them. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/7/) — No person lives a millennium, though some bristlecone pine trees in the USA are over 4,000 years old. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/8/) — A century has about 36,525 days. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/9/) — The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, which is 13.8 million millennia, so huge that scientists measure it in millions and billions of years. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/11/) — "The eighties" means the years 1980 to 1989, "the nineties" 1990 to 1999 and "the noughties" 2000 to 2009. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/12/) — The 1st century was years 1 to 100, so the 21st century runs from 2001 to 2100. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/13/) — The 19th century is 1801 to 1900, often called "the 1800s". - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/14/) — The third millennium began on 1 January 2001, but most people celebrated in 2000. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/16/) — A generation is about 25 to 30 years, so 4 generations cover about a century. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/17/) — A century has about 36,524 or 36,525 days: 100 × 365 = 36,500, plus 24 or 25 leap days. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/18/) — No human lives a millennium, but some bristlecone pine trees in the USA are over 4,000 years old. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/19/) — The oldest people live about 120 years, so a millennium is about 8 of the longest lifetimes. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/124-decades-centuries-millennia/20/) — The universe is about 13.8 billion years old, which is 13.8 million millennia. - ← previous: [Pendulums, Greenwich and railway time, atomic clocks and phones](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/123-pendulums-greenwich-atomic-clocks/) - next →: [BC and AD, dinosaurs and pyramids, and timelines](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/125-bc-ad-dinosaurs-pyramids-timelines/) - ↑ back to [World](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/)