# How Long Is A Century?

**URL:** <https://howtodiscuss.com/t/how-long-is-a-century/35653>\
**Category:** Articles\
**Created:** [February 4, 2021, 2:09pm UTC](https://howtodiscuss.com/t/how-long-is-a-century/35653 "2021-02-04T14:09:07Z")\
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**Author:** ![Hanzla](https://howtodiscuss.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/53a042/32.png) [@Hanzla](https://howtodiscuss.com/u/Hanzla)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2021, 8:10am UTC](https://howtodiscuss.com/t/how-long-is-a-century/35653/2 "2021-04-02T08:10:04Z")

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## How Long Is a Century?

A century is a time of 100 years, or we can say a time of decades. But how did we come to know that?

## Origin

The word “century” (centuria) is a roman word which means a unit of foot soldiers consisting of 100 men. This term referred to foot soldiers serving in the Roman Empire. It has another origin from the Latin word “centum” means one hundred.

**Point of view about a century**

There are mainly two points of view about the span of a century:

1. Strict construction

2. Popular perspective

In popular perspective, years are grouped according to their shared digits in a century. The beginning year of the century ends in “00” and the ending year ends at “99”.For example, the 17th century started from 1600 to 1699.

### Point To Ponder

For centuries people have been debating about the frame setting of a century. There has been a pesky discussion, and many thought that the strict construction is flat-out wrong for mathematical reasons.

Their view is that if a century is 100 years long and the first century began on January 1, 1, then on December 31, 99, only 99 years had passed. It means that the first century of the current millennium didn’t end until December 31, 100, and the second century didn’t start until January 1, 101.

According to a Library of Congress article by Ruth S. Freitag called ["Battle of the Centuries."](https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/battle.html)It appears to have been quite a commotion on the Continent over the matter in the late 1600s, and the British joined in on the next round:

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