Word To Use Today: century.

The Word Den has now passed its hundredth post: HURRAY!

It's been great fun so far, so here's to the next hundred.

A century is a hundred years, of course, and also a hundred runs scored by a batsman at cricket.
Basketball, I understand (and I use the word understand really very loosely here) uses century in the same sort of way.

In Ancient Rome a century was a group of men led by a centurion. Most of the time this group was somewhere between sixty and eighty strong, but I suppose it did help them look stronger and scarier than they really were.

Then there's the century plant, which only blooms once in its entire life, after...

...yep, you've got it, between ten and thirty years.

Ah well!


Word To Use Today: century. This word comes from the Latin word centum which means a hundred.