▪ I. century
(ˈsɛntjʊərɪ)
Also 6–7 -ie.
[a. F. centurie or ad. L. centuria, an assemblage or division of one hundred things, a company of 100 men, one of the 193 orders into which Servius Tullius divided the Roman people.]
1. a. Rom. Hist. A division of the Roman army, constituting half of a maniple, and probably consisting originally of 100 men; but in historical times the number appears to have varied according to the size and subdivision of the legion.
| 1533 Bellenden Livy i. (1822) 24 The first centurie of thir horsmen war namit Ramnenses. 1600 Holland Livy i. xiii. 11 Three centuries of gentlemen or knights. 1607 Shakes. Cor. i. vii. 3 If I do send, dispatch Those Centuries to our ayd. 1613 T. Godwin Exp. Rom. Antiq. (1658) 257 Every cohors containing 3 maniples, every maniple two centuries, every century an hundred soldiers. 1838–43 Arnold Hist. Rome I. i. 25 The thirty centuries which made up the legion. 1850 Merivale Rom. Emp. II. xv. 199 The whole body of the legionaries, century by century. |
b. transf. Any body of 100 men or soldiers.
| 1612–5 Hall Contempl. O.T. xix. i, As many centuries of Syrians, as Israel had single souldiers. 1839 De Quincey Casuistry Wks. VIII. 267 Forty-two centuries of armed men..firing from windows, must have made prodigious havoc. |
2. Hist. One of the 193 political divisions of the Roman people instituted by Servius Tullius, by which they voted in the
comitia centuriata.
| 1604 Edmonds Observ. Cæsar's Comm. ii. 3 The people being deuided first into their Tribes, and then into their classes and centuries. 1631 Heywood London's Jus. Hon. Ded., Censors..set a rate vpon euery mans estate, registring their names, and placing them in a fit century. 1850 Merivale Rom. Emp. (1865) IV. xxxii. 4 Assembled in their centuries, the Roman citizens appointed to all the higher magistracies of the republic. |
| transf. 1768 Tucker Lt. Nat. (1852) I. 647 None could ever fail in distinguishing the classes [the good and the wicked], however they might mistake in the particular centuries under each. |
3. a. A group of a hundred things; a hundred.
arch.| 1598 J. Dickenson Greene in Conc. (1878) 104 A Centurie of sowltyring passions. 1611 Shakes. Cymb. iv. ii. 391 When with wild wood-leaues and weeds I ha' strew'd his graue And on it said a Century of prayers. 1672 Manley Cowel's Interpr. Pref., Some Centuries of words therein totally omitted. 1737–40 H. Carey (title), The Musical Century in One Hundred English Ballads. 1855 Browning One Word More, Rafael made a century of sonnets. 1867 Boyd Oakw. Old 111, Printing centuries of copies, In the usual pamphlet-form. |
b. A hundred ‘points’ in the score of a game.
spec. in
Cricket, a hundred or more runs,
esp. made by one player in the same innings; in
Cycling, etc., a hundred miles in a race or ride;
double century, (
a)
Cricket, two hundred runs by the same player in one innings; (
b)
Cycling, a cycling run of two hundred miles.
| 1864 Bell's Life 11 June 8/4 Another century was piled up before the second wicket fell. 1871 F. Gale Echoes Cricket Fields viii. 43 There are slang writers who will tell me that the Lions' or the Nonpareils' [batting] average will be over a quarter of a century. Ibid. xiv. 90 He went in last, and joined Mr. Attfield, and between them ninety-nine runs were scored; or as a slang penny-a-liner would say, ‘the two last gents wrote up a century bar one.’ 1884 York Herald 23 Aug. 7/6 At 4.15 the third century was reached, Pullen having made exactly half the number. 1884 St. James's Gaz. 29 May 5/2 Mr. W. G. Grace and Barnes each scored upwards of a century in the same innings. 1897 Outing (U.S.) XXX. 343/1 The probability is that he will place to his credit on the [cycling] club records one or more double centuries. Ibid. 348/1 The more enthusiastic indulge in century runs. 1955 Times 25 June 7/5 A boy who..can be relied on to score a century in most school cricket matches. |
c. A hundred dollars.
U.S. slang.| 1859 Matsell Vocabulum 18 Century, one hundred dollars. 1930 J. Dos Passos 42nd Parallel v. 79 ‘You must have made big money.’.. ‘I saved pretty near a century.’ 1964 R. Chandler Killer in Rain 3 He..arranged five century notes like a tight poker hand. |
d. A hundred pounds.
slang.| 1861 [see stoater]. 1864 Derby Day 131 (Farmer), I'll lay you an even century about Nimrod. 1883 Echo 1 Nov. 4/2 (ibid.), Golding..purchased Passaic from F. Archer for a century. 1888 F. W. J. Henning Recoll. Prize Ring 155 Having made up his mind that he was going to pocket the century. |
4. A period of 100 years; originally expressed in full a ‘century of years’.
| 1626 W. Sclater Expos. 2 Thess. (1629) 109 In as few centuries of yeeres after the floud. c 1645 Howell Lett. (1650) II. 6 About the latter end of the last century of yeers. 1662 Stillingfl. Orig. Sacr. iii. iv. §9 By that proportion..it would amount to many thousands within a Century. a 1691 Boyle (J.), Though our joys, after some centuries of years, may seem to have grown older. 1727 A. Hamilton New Acc. E. Ind. I. Introd. 19 One intire Century would be too short a Time to learn them all. 1849–50 Alison Hist. Europe I. i. §71. 115 Not years, but centuries must elapse during the apprenticeship to liberty. |
5. Each of the successive periods of 100 years, reckoning from a received chronological epoch,
esp. from the assumed date of the birth of Christ: thus the hundred years from that date to the year a.d. 100 were the
first century of the Christian Era; those from 1801 to 1900 inclusive were the
nineteenth century.
| a 1638 Mede Wks. ii. i. (R.) Through every one of the first three centuries. 1649 S. Clark Marrow Eccl. Hist. Ep. Chr. Rdr., Here [the Learned, etc.] shall see in what Centuries, Ages and Places the famousest Lights of the Church..have flourished. 1771 Junius' Lett. liv. 284 The rebellion in the last century. 1780 Harris Philol. Enq. (1841) 471 Soon after the end of the sixth century, Latin ceased to be spoken at Rome. 1846 Knight Pass. Working Life I. §i. 18 The learned had settled, after a vast deal of popular controversy, that the century had its beginning on the 1st of January, 1801, and not on the 1st of January, 1800. 1852 Tennyson Ode Wellington 142 Thro' the centuries let a people's voice..Attest their great commander's claim. 1872 Morley Voltaire (1886) 4 Voltaire may stand for the name of the Renaissance of the eighteenth century. |
† 6. A ‘hundred’, as a division of a county.
rare.
| 1611 Speed Theat. Gt. Brit. ii. 3/2 Elfred..ordained Centuries, which they terme Hundreds. |
† 7. A hundred in numeration; one of the figures expressing ‘the hundreds’.
Obs.| 1773 Horsley in Phil. Trans. LXIV. 299 Collect the corrections for the units, decades, and centuries of fathom in the approximate height. |
8. pl. The Church History of the centuriators of Magdeburg, divided into centuries.
| 1606 Earl of Northampton in True & Perf. Relation V v iij b, The iudgement of the Centuries in this circumstance concerning Childericke. |
9. attrib. and
comb. as
century-clock,
century-circled adj.; (senses 4 and 5)
century (or centuries)-long adj. and
adv.,
century (or centuries)-old adj.;
century-plant, the
Agave or American Aloe;
century-writer = Centuriator.
| 18.. Whittier Ship-builders iii, The *century-circled oak. |
| 1870 Emerson Soc. & Sol. xii. 255 Not know that the *century-clock had struck seventy instead of twenty. |
| 1883 ‘Mark Twain’ Life on Mississippi xlii. 386 Even the children know that a dead saint enters upon a *century-long career of assassination the moment the earth closes over his corpse. 1924 R. Graves Mock Beggar Hall 62 They themselves May century-long be doomed to walk these rooms. 1933 L. Bloomfield Language i. 4 A century-long controversy. 1963 Time 30 Aug. 11/3 There cannot, in fact, be any real understanding of the Negro revolution of 1963 without some understanding of the Negro's centuries-long struggle in America. |
| 1845 Longfellow Nuremberg in Poems (1845) 88 Thy castle, time-defying, *centuries old. 1857 Whittier Mabel Martin 63 The household ruin century-old. 1873 D. M. P. tr. Wellmer's C'tess zu Stolb. ii. 23 The century-old motto of the Stolbergs. 1901 Sketch 31 July 56/2 Buried in its centuries-old bosom. 1958 B. Abel-Smith in N. Mackenzie Conviction 63 The eerie, century-old building. |
| 1843 J. L. Stephens Incidents of Travel in Yucatan II. ii. 44 Growing on the roof are two maguey plants, Agave Americana, in our latitude called the *century plant, but under the hot sun of the tropics blooming every four or five years. 1884 Harper's Mag. Jan. 193/2 The great gray-blue swords of the century-plant. |
| 1626 W. Sclater Expos. 2 Thess. (1629) 202 In euery age inclinations of doctrine are wel obserued by the *century-writers. 1637 Gillespie Eng. Pop. Cerem. iii. iv. 79 The Centurie-writers make out of Dionysius..his Epistle..that the Custome of the Church of Alexandria..was, etc. 1684 Baxter Cath. Communion 36 Noted Divines and Century Writers. |
Hence
centuryism, as in
nineteenth-centuryism, a characteristic of the 19th century.
| 1882 Athenæum No. 2836. 277 The vapid eighteenth centuryisms of Le Bailly. |
▪ II. century obs. var. of
sentry.
| 1649 Lanc. Tracts Civil Wars 223 Walk to the Deansgate, and from thence to the other Centuries, using his best encouragements to prop up their hearts. 1759 Robertson Hist. Scotl. I. ii. 87 Having placed Centuries at door of the Cardinals apartment. |
▪ III. century obs. form of
centaury.