Tag: decade

A decade is a period of 10 years. The word is derived (via French) from the Ancient Greek dekas which means ten. This etymology is sometime confused with the Latin decas (ten) and dies (days), which is not correct. The other words for spans of years come from Latin: lustrum (5 years), century (100 years), millennium (1000 years).
Although any period of 10 years is a decade, a convenient and frequently referenced interval is based on the tens digit of a calendar year, as in using “1960s” to represent the decade from 1960 to 1969. Often, for brevity, only the tens part is mentioned (60s or sixties), although this may leave it uncertain which century is meant. These references are frequently used to encapsulate popular culture or other widespread phenomena that dominated such a decade, as in The Great Depression of the 1930s.
Since the common calendar starts with year 1, its first full decade is the years 1 to 10, the second decade from 11 to 20, and so on. So while the “2000s” comprises…