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I am looking for a word for a period of 10000 years, similar to how millennium represents 1000 years. The closest match I came up with was myriaannum from myria- and annum. However, the metric prefix myria- is no longer used, and in common language, a myriad refers to an indefinitely large number.

The Old Man of the Mountain was formed a myriaannum ago by glaciers.

Is there a more commonly used word for this or is myriaannum my best option?

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    I know I could easily use "ten millennia" in the given example, but I am more interested if there is actually a word for this.
    – Kys
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 20:09
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    There is no more "Old Man of the Mountain." He collapsed a lustrum ago.
    – Stan
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 20:51
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    Over a triskaidekannum ago in fact =/
    – Kys
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 20:57
  • Am I getting that old?
    – Stan
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 21:01
  • The shortest geologic time scale I could find is a chron (palaeos.com/timescale/timeunits.html) but that is still on the order of a million years.
    – Dave
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 22:27

4 Answers 4

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No, there is no more commonly used word for a period of 10000 years. But I would also advise against using myriaannum; it does not look especially well-formed to me as a classical compound (it combines Greek myria- and Latin annum), and the prefix "myria-" seems to be obsolete in scientific compounds (like mega-annum). In my opinion, it's best to just go with

The Old Man of the Mountain was formed ten millenia ago by glaciers.

Your question, and vickyace's answer, both mention the Greek root myria- which was used with the meaning "ten thousand." But I cannot find any English word derived from this (aside from the aforementioned myriaannum) with the specific meaning "a period of ten thousand years."

I found a Math Forum thread about this topic: Year 10,000? There were lots of miscellaneous suggestions for neologisms of unclear validity, but among these I found the following interesting information in a post by Patrick T. Wahl:

The Greek word "myrioi" for 10,000 is the source of "myrietes" and "myrieteris," which mean "a period of 10,000 years." Similarly, there is "chilieteris," a period of 1,000 years, which uses the "chili-" prefix that became our "kilo-." By the way, there's a very long word for a myriad of myriads = 10^8 in Greek. Nothing like these spellings seems to have entered English.

Classical Latin seems to have had a wealth of "-ennium" words, including some that I didn't suspect ( like triennium, tricennium, tricentennium for periods of 3, 30 and 300 years respectively.) The word "millenium" is the biggest I found. It appears that a modifier got stuck on the front if there was more than a thousand of anything. Something like "decei millenii" for ten millenia seems to be what they used. [...]

Consulting the Oxford English Dictionary, I found no word for "10,000 years" that survived into English. ( Particularly NOT "myriennium" or "myriayore": those are not in the O.E.D. ) I was surprised to find the Greek "chili-" word above as the English word "chiliad." It means "a group of 1000," but also "1000 years." Might "myriad" have the alternate meaning, too? Only a scholar can say, and the O.E.D. gave no citation for such a use.

The entry for μυριετής myrietḗs in Liddell, Scott, and Jones' Greek-English Lexicon confirms that it was used to refer to 10,000-year periods. It seems to have been an adjective rather than a noun.

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    Μῡριετής is a fairly straightforward bahuvrihi compound and thus primarily usable as an adjective (although the head, ἔτος, is a noun). It literally means ‘having 10,000 years’. Commented Jan 1, 2017 at 1:18
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I call it myriad years.

Wikipedia

the number 10000

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    Lovely word with a precise meaning I didn't know. Thank you. The problem is that 'myriad' also stands for '...*countless elements, aspects, phases, etc.; innumerable, uncountable* (OED)' (the only sense I knew, until now).
    – Dan
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 21:23
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    -1 Would anyone say "century years" or even "decade years"? This building is over two centuries old; About a decade ago I gave up smoking; Almost two millennia have passed since the birth of Christ (the word "years" is not needed)
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jun 11, 2016 at 5:51
  • @Mari-LouA: "myriad" can be used as a noun or as an adjective; either "myriad years" or "a myriad of years" is acceptable.
    – herisson
    Commented Jun 11, 2016 at 6:13
  • @sumelic if the OP edits his answer, I'll reverse my downvote. I still don't like the suggestion though.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jun 11, 2016 at 6:18
  • @Mari-LouA I'm seriously asking here. How would that edit go? Should I incorporate what sumelic said?
    – vickyace
    Commented Jun 11, 2016 at 6:52
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I would call a 10 millennia time span a decamillennium.

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  • Why the hyphen?
    – Toothrot
    Commented Jun 11, 2016 at 1:37
  • @Lawrence I give up. Why? … I'll remove the super-fluous hyphen. I did it to help the readability for the "deca-millennium" suggestion. Thank you.
    – Stan
    Commented Jun 11, 2016 at 2:05
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Banzai may refer to: A traditional Japanese exclamation meaning "ten thousand years" of long life.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banzai

It's not originally English, but lots of English isn't, either.

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    Considering the actual usage of banzai in English (as an exclamation) I'm not sure that this would be interpreted as intended by the average English speaker.
    – Catija
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 20:49
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    While true, banzai and the similar wànsui in Chinese are often used to indicate an arbitrarily large number, similar to the way English speakers would say "May you live a thousand years". This is due to the largest distinct number being 10000 in their numbering systems
    – Kys
    Commented Jun 10, 2016 at 20:51

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