Beginning in the mid-1990s, people (including Cecil) were speculating as to what the decade spanning 2000-2009 would be called.
Well, we have less than two years left in that (this) decade, and I still don’t know. It’s weird. While people were talking about “life in the 80s” in the 1980s, and “livin’ in the 90s” in the 1990s, the only references to our current decade I can think of are terms like “millennial” or the dreaded “post-9/11”.
I may have heard reference to “the 2000s” on the radio somewhere… Or maybe I’m fabricating that memory.
Anybody out there have actual cites of media or popular usage referring to this decade?
I haven’t heard anybody say “twenty-oh-seven” for the year just past. It’s always either “two thousand seven”, “two thousand AND seven” or just “oh seven”.
If I were pressed to name this decade I’d say “the 2000s” (two-thousands). One could argue that term should last for at least 100 if not 1000 years, but if you heard someone referring to “the 1800s” I don’t think that would be thought of as the whole 19th Century but rather the years 1800-1809.
And hey, for what it’s worth, Wikipedia agrees with me that the 1800s refer to 1800-1809. And the 1900s to 1900-1909.
See also Cecil’s later, more comprehensive, yet equally inconclusive discussion: What did people in the 1900s call the decade in which they lived?. At the end he just says “wake me up in 2010”. Unless things change dramatically, on 1/1/2010 I plan to post a reminder that it is time for him to wake up and give us a satisfactory answer.
Just for the record, there is no such thing as a decade from 2000-2009. Now of course, there is a period of 10 years which could be called a decade, just as any 100-year stretch could be called a century.
But if you mean the first decade of the 21st century, it runs from Jan. 1, 2001 to December 31, 2010. So we are not “about to finish” the first decade since it has almost 3 years left in it.
What the &*&^%$ am I talking about, you ask?
Well, the last year of the 20th century was 2000. Yes, you read it right.
The first year of the 21st century was 2001. The present century began on Jan. 1, 2001. The last day of the previous centuiry was December 31, 2000.
The first decade of the present century also began on Jan. 1, 2001.
It is really not hard to understand. Imagine I am giving you $20 (now I have your attention ) but all in pennies. So I am giving you 2000 pennies. And, being anal retentive, I have numbered them with a paint brush with the numbers 1 through 2000.
Okay, so pennies 1 to 100 are the first dollar. The last penny of the first dollar is number 100. Penny number 101 is the firsat penny of the second dollar. the 100 pennies numbered 101 to 200 make up the second dollar. And so on. Until you get to penny 1900. It is the last penny of the 18th dollar. Just like 1900 was the ;ast year of the eighteenth century.
Then pennies 1901 to 2000 are the 100 pennies in the 20th dollar. Once I have given you penny 2000, you now have $20. Once we reached the end of the year 2000 we had completed the twentieth century.
Your second sentence appears to contradict your first. A decade, by definition, is merely any ten-year span. The “decade from 1955 to 1964” just is another way of saying “the ten-year period from 1955 to 1964”, just as “the 1960s” was a decade spanning from 1960 through 1969.
Right away you contradict yourself. A decade is, indeed, ANY period of ten years (or, indeed, any interval of ten anythings).
This situation is NOT like the confusion surrounding the beginning of the 21st century; we are not proclaiming the 201st decade, and there is no reason to start with 2001. We are talking about a ten-year period characterized by "beginning with ‘2-0-0’,"and that’s a decade. It will have a name, or names, reflecting that, and it will start with 2000.
It is not a contradiction because I openly admit that one could in theory call any 10year-period a decade. My use of the words “of course” indicates that I am well aware that you could see that as a contradiction, but that it is not.
I’m not digging the twenty-o-somethings at all. A reporter was talking about a topic from 2005 on the news recently and she said such and such happened in “Twenty-o-five”. I had to think a minute about what she meant, and was thoroughly disgusted once I realized she meant Two Thousand Five. Twenty-o is a horrible way to go about it IMHO, and should never be repeated in such a way ever again. It’s once thing to say Nineteen-o-five, but not Twenty-o-five.
Why? Because nobody says twenty hundred instead of two thousand? And yet nineteen hundred is a perfectly fine substitute for one thousand nine hundred. I wonder why.
) but all in pennies. So I am giving you 2000 pennies. And, being anal retentive, I have numbered them with a paint brush with the numbers 1 through 2000.