The 1900s were when I drove my Hupmobile runabout.
Nah, I don’t call them at all.
That century was pretty brutal, to me.
I said good riddance.
“Party like it’s 1999” 
I would use ‘1900s’ as a noun, but ‘20th Century’ as an adjective. And the same would go for other century names. It’s pretty rare that that one year discrepancy would be relevant to that general time frame.
Heh, I was at a music festival this weekend, and the host at one stage had mentioned about how so-and-so had been “teaching dance since the 1900s (and wow, it sounds old to say it that way)”.
True. I’ve had that same mental stumble / pause when confronted with that phrasing.
But there’s a certain ambiguity between “the 1900s” referring to the whole century versus just the decade that ended when 1910 came around. Contrast “teaching dance since the 1920s” or “since the 1980s” with “since the 1900s”.
To me at least, the “1800s” or “1700s” are unambiguously the century, not the decade. But having lived through a sizeable chunk of the decades that started with “19”, for me “1900s” mostly connotes a decade with only a weak afterimage of the century. Hence the double-take when I hear it used to connote the century.
To me, that decade would be “Turn of the century” or (archaically) “the aughts”.
Of course, both of those could also be used for the decade at the start of the 21st century, but that, I call “the two thousands”. I never claimed I was consistent.
I think, to me, “the 1900s” sounds old just because, well, if you’re dating something by what century it is, it must be old.
Absolutely. I never use “the 20th century.” At best people have to stop and think for a second and many get it wrong anyway. 1800s, 1900s - just use the actual numbers.
For me “the 1900s” has never meant just the decade – it’s always meant the full century, 1900-1999 (not, of course, to be confused with the 20th century, 1901-2000), and using it to mean just the decade always confused me. I don’t think I ever heard it used that way before the turn of the century. The ten years before 1911 were “the nineteen-oughts”, followed by “the teens”, “the twenties”, &c. The last few decades have been “the eighties”, “the nineties”, “the twenty-oughts”, “the teens”, and now “the twenties”. And the previous “teens” and “twenties” have “nineteen” added to them.
A little off the OP, but. . .
I remember “old timers” when I was a kid referring to the years 1901-1909 without the O or zero, such as one relative who said he was born in “nineteen nine.” I’ve heard that in some archive footage from back in the day in some documentaries. Can’t actually point one out at this time, but it always catches my ear.
Orson Welles pronounces 1903 “nineteen-three” at 2:30 in this track:
If you say a century or a millennium, then yes. But that’s also true if you say a year. A year doesn’t mean from Jan 1 to Dec 31. It means a set of (approximately) 365 consecutive days. But if you say the year 2020, you mean a very specific set of days Jan 1 2020 to Dec 31 2020. The 20th Century similarly has an exact meaning and we can argue what that is. But the First Century started with year 1 as there was no year 0 so the 2nd had to start in 101, etc.
This thread reminds me of an exchange at work. A guy asks me why 2000 wasn’t the first year of the new century. For some reason I said, “well, you’re not one year old on the day you’re born”. It made sense to him, but even though I’m the one that said it, I’m not sure it really made any sense.
I think this is true, particularly because “1900s” is often used in the phrase “early 1900s” and tends to convey the connotation of something more than a century old, either the first decade or the first couple of decades of the 20th century. I use “20th century” because it’s clear and unambiguous and carries no such connotations, clearly referring to the century that ended either at the end of 1999 or the end of 2000, depending on one’s degree of pedantry.
Pedantry? It’s common sense:
Whenever this issue comes up, I like to quote distinguished Oxford-educated psychology Ph.D. and respected Federal law enforcement official Fox Mulder:
“No one likes a math geek, Scully.”
FWIW, I have never heard or seen any reference to the decade from 1900-1909 as “the 1900s.” That doesn’t mean it was never used, but it doesn’t appear to have been ambiguous because it was almost always worded as “the early 1900s,” even as recently as the 1920s.
I do.
Just a reminder that there was no year 1, or 2, or 3, etc. The whole A.D. system wasn’t invented until centuries later. All the years before that were backdating.
One could similarly backdate to A.D. 0. The fact that many people refer to the 20th century as 1900-1999, inclusively, indicates that those people are implicitly backdating a year 0.
And many people don’t do that. But the thing about arbitrary conventions (like when to start counting a century) is that it’s merely a convention and not immutable.
And when the Julian Calendar was used to start with the assumed birth of JC (5th or 6th century?), the Europeans didn’t have the concept of 0 as a number anyway.
It’s true there was no year 1 or 2 etc at that time, but year 0 is different, There is no year 0 even now. 1 CE (or AD if you insist) follows immediately after 1 BCE (or BC). That’s all I was referring to. So Jesus was supposedly 1 year old in year 2 etc.