decade

noun

a period of ten years: the three decades from 1776 to 1806.

a period of ten years beginning with a year whose last digit is zero: the decade of the 1980s.

a group, set, or series of ten.

Origin:
1425–75; late Middle English < Middle French < Late Latin decad- (stem of decas) < Greek dekad- (stem of dekás) group of ten, equivalent to dék(a) ten + -ad- -ade²

Related forms

half-dec·ade, noun

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.

a stew of meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

decade (ˈdɛkeɪd, dɪˈkeɪd)

—n
1.	a period of ten consecutive years
2.	a group or series of ten

[C15: from Old French, from Late Latin decad-, decas, from Greek dekas, from deka ten]

de'cadal

—*adj*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

decade

mid-15c., "ten parts" (of anything; originally in ref. to the books of Livy), from M.Fr. decade, from L.L. decadem (nom. decas), from Gk. dekas (acc. dekada) "group of ten." Meaning "ten years" is 1590s in English.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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Example sentences

Crisp-fried chicken tacos have been the party entrée of choice here for almost

a decade.

The technology is based on a decade of research elucidating how the brain

controls the immune system, particularly inflammation.

Due to the plodding geological shifts of the continents, the city is sinking at

a rate of two and a half inches per decade.

In less than a decade, each of us will be surrounded by a virtual cloud of

billions of points of medical data.

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Matching Quote

"Side by side with the Marxists of the northern cities, flourishing in the same situation and starting from the same premise, there appeared at the beginning of the thirties the second of the anti-capitalist movements of the decade, the movement called Southern Agrarianism. If the Marxists wished to give power to the masses, the Agrarians meant to give it to an educated aristocracy ruling over an eighteenth-century economy. Where the Marxists foresaw an ever-growing concentration of industrial activity in units that were to increase in size, the Agrarians strove to break up the large productive units into groups of small ones, and, through decentralization, return to the society of Jefferson's time, when the great bulk of the people owned their own land. The Agrarians, consequently, looked as strenuously at the past as the Marxists did to the future. Where the Marxists drew their inspiration from the socialist thinkers of the nineteenth century, the Agrarians went back to Plato and his philosopher-kings vigorously trained to rule the state, to Carlyle and superman formulators of modern times, to Chesterton and Belloc and their strong religious orthodoxy."

-Leo Gurko

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