What is the definition of a century?

century /

1. A century is the period of a hundred years, counting from what is believed to be the year of the birth of Jesus Christ. It is used when stating a date. For example, the 20th century is the period from 1901 to 2000 or A.D. 1901-2000.
   (A.D. = Anno Domini - latin for "In the year of our Lord")
   eg. He's an expert on fifteenth century Italian art.
   eg. Queen Victoria died at the turn of the century (=the time when one century ends and another begins).
   
   
2. A century is also any period of a hundred years.
   eg. Her medical career spanned half a century.
   

Note: For interest sake, the authors of this site have included information on the year 1900, although strictly, it was the last year of the 19th century, and not part of the 20th century.

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Definitions were adapted from
http://www.linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de:8099/cgi-bin/search.sh?tmpl=tmpls&itmpl=tmpls&form=century http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/elt/dictionary/cmd_search.asp?searchword=century&dict=b
h ttp://www.christiantech.com/cgi-bin/webster.exe?search_for_texts_web1828=century