decade

American  

[dek-eyd, duh-keyd] / ˈdɛk eɪd, dəˈkeɪd /

noun

decades plural

1. a period of ten years.

   the three decades from 1776 to 1806.

2. a period of ten years beginning with a year whose last digit is zero.

   the decade of the 1980s.

3. a group, set, or series of ten.

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decade British  

/ dɪˈkeɪd, ˈdɛkeɪd /

noun

1. a period of ten consecutive years

2. a group or series of ten

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• half-decade
  noun
• decadal
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• decades
  plural

Etymology

Origin of decade

First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English, from Middle French, from Late Latin decad-, stem of decas, from Greek dekás “group of ten”; equivalent to deca- + -ade ²

Explanation

She was so nervous to see her high school sweetheart at their reunion: it had been a decade (ten years) since she'd seen him at graduation, and she still got butterflies thinking about him. A decade is a period of ten years. Decade contains dec, which is used in words that have to do with tens. The Marty Paich Dectet was a band with ten players. A decahedron is a shape with ten faces. And the decimal system is based on the number ten.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

decade decades

According to the complaint, Prabhakar had taught the story for nearly a decade without incident and used it in a unit on unsympathetic and unreliable narrators alongside works by Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver.

From Salon ● Aug. 2, 2026

WSI’s Thompson says that is partly because injuries were more severe a decade ago during North Dakota’s oil boom.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026

Puttock said when he started researching beavers a decade ago he was not thinking about wildfires but flood management.

From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2026

To illustrate my point, consider the three occasions over the last decade when I devoted a column to taking issue with a chorus of voices calling for Cook to step down.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 2, 2026

The most important conclusion of the most important biochemical paper of the decade was buried, like a polite cough, under a mound of dense text.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

“I know that for decades, what we’ve seen is not what’s real.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026

And the EPA has relied on these findings for decades, including during the first Trump administration and other Republican administrations.

From Slate ● Aug. 2, 2026

For decades, the political calendar was unchanged and, mostly, unchallenged.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 2, 2026

An active startup scene has developed in Lithuania and its fellow Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia in the decades since their transition from Soviet-controlled command economies.

From Barron's ● Aug. 2, 2026

That was when it first occurred to me that the only map of Ghana I had ever known—depicting the lake—was mere decades old.

From "Flying Through Water" by Mamle Wolo