[Vocabulary] what do we call the first 2 decades of the millenium

[TicoInBrazil]

from 2000 until 2009? and then from 2010 until 2019? i know that after 2019 its "the twenties"

 

[emsr2d2]

The same issue happens in every century. Some people call the first nine years of this century "the noughties" (or the "naughties"). However, the years 1910-1919 didn't have a nickname, nor do 2010-2019.

 

[5jj]

I have heard and read the oughties for 2000-2009.

This seems to me strange, as I have never heard anyone say, for example, 'twenty ought five'. My grandfather did speak of '(nineteen) ought five', but he was one of the last people I knew to use the word 'ought' in this way. Not all dictionaries record it. Of those that do, most seem to prefer the spelling 'aught'. Several label it 'older/less common form of nought' or even 'archaic'.

 

[emsr2d2]

I have heard and read the oughties for 2000-2009.

This seems to me strange, as I have never heard anyone say, for example, 'twenty ought five'. My grandfather did speak of '(nineteen) ought five', but he was one of the last people I knew to use the word 'ought' in this way. Not all dictionaries record it. Of those that do, most seem to prefer the spelling 'aught'. Several label it 'older/less common form of nought' or even 'archaic'.

Our grandfathers get a lot of press on this site. I wonder if they're getting on well wherever they are, if they're anywhere of course.

 

[BobK]

:up: And Mr Micawber's famous advice includes the word:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

See more here.

.. and we haven't got far enough into the teenies to find a need a name for them <- first sighting. I think decades tend to acquire a nick-name in a later decade (at least, the nicknames are rather ephemeral, until used in historical reports - when one or two become more-or-less standardized).

b

 

[emsr2d2]

:up:
.. and we haven't got far enough into the teenies to find a need a name for them <- first sighting.

b

I agree, although had there been a name for the years 1910-1919, we'd probably be using it these days and would then just copy it for this decade.

 

[BobK]

:up: - I was thinking about that very thing earlier today. I think I've seen 'in the second decade of the 20th century' - which is a bit cumbersome. Perhaps nothing much happened in the decade before the Roaring Twenties...:-?

b

 

[BobK]

PS for OT.

I missed this first time around. It's such a commmon (make that 'commmmmon') mistake that I've become de-sensitized.

Millenium, it it existed ('These are the only ones of which the news has come to Hahvard/And there may be many others but they haven't been discuhvered') would be an element with the atomic number 1,000. A period of a thousand years is a millenNium.

b