Other forms: decades
A decade is ten years. The decade you spent in the same flat, the decade since your father died, 'we haven't spoken in decades'.
A decade can start anywhere — the ten years since your wedding are a decade — but the word is also used for the named blocks of a century: the sixties, the nineties, the decade of shoulder pads. Above it sits the century, a hundred years, and the millennium, a thousand. The stress falls on the first syllable, DEC-ade. Two lookalikes trip learners up: decade has nothing to do with decay, and nothing to do with decadent.
1noundecadeA period of ten years.~26%
“They lived in Lisbon for nearly a decade.”
2nounnamedOne of the named ten-year blocks of a century, such as the 1980s.~74%
“Big hair and cheap synthesisers defined the decade.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
decade is a length of time.
Ancient Greek δέκα, 'ten', gave δεκάς, a set of ten, which Latin took as decās and Old French passed on as decade. The ten-year meaning began as a shortcut: people said decade of years, then dropped the years and kept the decade.
Ancient Greek
δεκάς
Latin
decās — (set of) ten
Old French
decade
Middle English
decade
English, today
decade
Built from
From Middle English decade, from Old French decade, from Latin decās (“(set of) ten”), from Ancient Greek δεκάς, from δέκα (“ten”). In reference to a span of ten years, originally a clipping of the phrase decade of years. by surface analysis, dec- + -ade. a doublet of decad and dekad.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA