Decade

How to spell decade

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce decade

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does decade mean?

1. nounA period of ten years, especially one of the numbered ten-year spans of a century.

Decade in a sentence

• The company celebrated its founding more than a decade ago.

• House prices have risen steadily over the past decade.

Where does decade come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Decade traces back to the Greek dekas, with its stem dekad-, which simply meant 'a group of ten', built directly on deka, the Greek word for the number ten. The term passed into Latin as decas, decadis, still carrying the sense of any set of ten things, and from there into Old French as decade. English adopted it in the fifteenth century, at first for a group of ten of anything, including, notably, the divisions of the Roman historian Livy's great work, which scholars grouped into 'decades' of ten books each. Only later did the meaning settle firmly on a period of ten years, the sense that dominates today. The same deka root sits inside relatives such as 'decimal', 'decagon' and 'December' (originally the tenth month of the old Roman calendar), and remembering that single 'dec' for ten is the surest way to keep the spelling straight.

How the word is built

• dec- (from Greek deka: ten)
• -ade (noun suffix denoting a group)