century
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
7 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "century", 7-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "century" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "century" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
century is aEnglishnoun. It means: A period of one hundred consecutive years; often specifically a numbered period with conventional start and end dates, e.g., the twentieth century, which stretches from (strictly) 1901 through 2000... Pronounced /ˈsɛnt͡ʃʊɹi/. It ranks #1,011 in English word frequency. Often confused with center and centre.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | century |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsɛnt͡ʃʊɹi/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #1,011 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for century is 7 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsɛnt͡ʃʊɹi/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,011 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 11 documented wrong-spelling variants for century, with forms such as "ccentury", "cenntury", and "centruy". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 5 confusable-pair relationships, "center", "centre", "centers", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English centurie (“a count of one hundred (of anything); a division of the Roman army; century; a division of land”), from Old French centurie, from Latin centuria, from centum (“one hundred”). The most common modern use is a shortening of centu… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is century, spelled C-E-N-T-U-R-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A period of one hundred consecutive years; often specifically a numbered period with conventional start and end dates, e.g., the twentieth century, which stretches from (strictly) 1901 through 2000, or (informally) 1900 through 1999. The first century AD was from 1 to 100.
- 2A unit in ancient Roman army, originally of one hundred army soldiers as part of a cohort, later of more varied sizes (but typically containing sixty to seventy or eighty) soldiers or other men (guards, police, firemen), commanded by a centurion.
- 3A political division of ancient Rome, meeting in the Centuriate Assembly.
- 4A hundred things of the same kind; a hundred.
- 5A hundred runs scored either by a single player in one innings, or by two players in a partnership.
- 6A score of one hundred points.
- 7A race a hundred units (as meters, kilometres, miles) in length.
- 8A banknote in the denomination of one hundred dollars.
Etymology
From Middle English centurie (“a count of one hundred (of anything); a division of the Roman army; century; a division of land”), from Old French centurie, from Latin centuria, from centum (“one hundred”). The most common modern use is a shortening of century of years.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccentury,cenntury,centruy,centtury,centurry,centuryy,centuyr,cenutry,cetnury,cnetury,ecntury
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for century
Misspelling Variants of "century"
Frequency rank: #1,011 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: