4 ms·

What's the etymology of that?

• PlaneSploit 10y ago
  1250-1300; < Medieval Latin sēculāris, Late Latin saeculāris worldly, temporal (opposed to eternal), Latin: of an age, equivalent to Latin saecul (um) long period of time + -āris -ar1; replacing Middle English seculer < Old French < Latin, as above
  • kensai 10y ago
    In fact: century in Italian is "secolo"... :)
• heneryville 10y ago
  It comes from the Latin saeculum which is a period of time longer than a person's life. Rome used to hold the secular games, which was an event so big, it'd never be seen again in a person's lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_Games
• opiuse 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeculum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeculum A saeculum is a length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person or the equivalent of the complete renewal of a human population. The word has evolved within Romance languages (and Swedish) to mean "century".
  • ClashTheBunny 10y ago
    > The word has evolved within Romance languages (and Swedish) to mean "century". Doesn't that come from centum (100) like cent and centurion?
    • saint_fiasco 10y ago
      That's for Germanic languages. In Romance languages the words for century look like "seculo", "siglo", &c.
    • carlob 10y ago
      What they meant is that in Romance languages century is a cognate of secular: secolo in Italian, siècle in French, siglo in Spanish…
      • capote 10y ago
        And secol in Romanian ^_^