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# century

«century» in Mova's school dictionary: **a period of one hundred years** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (a century, centuries)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A century is a period of one hundred years. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#m1)

2) A century also means one of the hundred-year periods counted in history, such as «the twenty-first century» (the one we live in now). [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#m2)

3) In cricket a century is a score of one hundred runs by one player. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

In maths a century is 100 years: 2 centuries = 200 years, half a century = 50 years. In history lessons centuries help to say when things happened, like the century when cars were invented. In sport (cricket in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland) a batter who scores 100 runs makes a century. Phrases: a century ago, for centuries, the turn of the century.

### examples

- A century is one hundred years. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#x1)
- This old oak tree has stood here for more than a century. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#x2)
- Castles were built many centuries ago. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#x3)
- Half a century is fifty years. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#x4)
- People have played football for centuries. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#x5)
- The batter scored a century in the cricket match. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#x6)
- In which century were trains invented? [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#x7)
- A turtle can live for about a century. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#x8)
- But that century passed, and no one freed me. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/#x9)

### note

Plural: centuries (y → ies). The word comes from the Latin for «hundred», like «cent» and «centimetre». Trap: the century number is one more than the hundreds of the years — years beginning «19..» belong to the twentieth century. In maths problems: 1 century = 100 years = 10 decades.

### In the corpora

- [The steel pan was developed in Trinidad and Tobago in the 20th century from oil drums and is its national instrument.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/10-instruments-of-the-world-bandura-erhu-sitar-kora-didgeridoo/14/)
- [Bird droppings piled up for centuries on islands were once mined as a rich fertiliser.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/398-poo-wee-and-smells-rabbits-that-eat-their-droppings-dung-beetles-and-the-smelliest-animals/14/)
- [Real people of those centuries lived through colder winters, failed harvests and hurricanes that sank many Spanish treasure ships.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/23-weather-storms-and-the-changing-climate/8/)
- [Fossil fuels are non-renewable: they took millions of years to form and we are using them up in centuries.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/59-coal-oil-and-gas/17/)
- [The Vedas are very old sacred hymns, learned by heart and passed on by speaking for many centuries before being written down.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/7-ancient-india-the-indus-cities-and-the-first-kingdoms/13/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «century» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/C/century/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.