Timeline for Is "in the old decades" grammatically correct?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 13, 2013 at 11:13 | comment | added | Kris | Is “in the old decades” grammatically correct? --> You have not answered the question. | |
| Oct 13, 2013 at 0:52 | comment | added | Peter Shor | In the French Revolution, decades replaced weeks, so since then it has predominantly meant a group of ten days. Was this true before the Revolution? The OED has a lot of early citations where decade means ten other things. And in English, before the 19th century, nearly all the OED's citations using decade for ten years are phrased as "a decade of years" (and the context for the one that isn't makes it clear years are meant). So the divergence in meaning happened well after English borrowed the word decade from French. | |
| Oct 12, 2013 at 21:28 | comment | added | ex-user2728 | δέκα means both "ten" and "group of ten", and French "décade" has been a group of ten lines, in poetry (now "dizain") ; especially since the Révolution, it means exclusively "ten days". If "decade" meant any group of ten things, whatever they could be, why not months, weeks, hours or ... pencils. | |
| Oct 12, 2013 at 19:46 | comment | added | RegDwigнt | I fail to see how the first part has anything at all to do with the question at hand. The second part sort of does but could use some fleshing out to say the least. It does not actually answer any of the questions OP has. The top comment is older than this "answer" and is much more helpful. | |
| Oct 12, 2013 at 19:11 | comment | added | Peter Shor | Etymonline seems to say that in Middle French and Middle English, "decade" meant ten of anything. See pentad and hexad. English and French evolved so it now means ten of different time periods. | |
| Oct 12, 2013 at 19:10 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | The French meaning relating to days is no more “right” than the English meaning relating to years. In fact, English is more historically accurate in that ‘decade’ can also mean just any group of ten things, whatever they be, which is the original meaning of the word. | |
| Oct 12, 2013 at 19:06 | history | answered | ex-user2728 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |