A few people have commented that they’re disappointed I’m buying into the notion that the “decade” begins in the zero year and ends in the nine year (e.g., 2000-2009), as opposed to the “purist” ideal that it begins in the one year and ends in the zero year (e.g., 2001-2010). I have a couple of thoughts on this.
First, I’ve always been far less sympathetic to the “purist” argument with respect to decades than with respect to centuries and millennia. This is largely because decades are only referred to by names like the “1990s,” “1980s,” etc. — i.e., there is no equivalent to “21st century” or “third millennium” when talking about decades. (Nobody calls the 2000s the “200th decade.”) And it just seems downright silly to suggest that 1990 was not part of the 1990s. Maybe it wasn’t part of the “199th decade,” but it was surely part of the 1990s.
Indeed, my attitude about the definition of “century,” back in the run-up to 2000 when nerds were hotly debating such things, was that the nineteen-hundreds went from 1900-1999, while the twentieth century technically went from 1901-2000. This makes intuitive sense to me. Thus, applying the same logic to decades, if somebody wanted to suggest that the “two hundredth decade A.D.” started in 2001 and won’t end until 2010, I’d be fine with that. But the “2000s” clearly start in 2000 and end in 2009, by definition. And since ordinal numbers aren’t actually used to refer to decades, I think that settles the debate.
Furthermore, it’s important to remember that language is always evolving — and I think that, in course of the 1999-2000 New Year’s celebrations, the words “century” and “millennium” (and, by extension, “decade”) evolved. Maybe decades, centuries and millennia did technically start in the one year and end in the zero year, but they don’t anymore. Their definitions changed, by our global society’s common consent (with a handful of dorky objectors), on or about January 1, 2000. And if this means the 20th century, or some previous century, is retrospectively regarded as having had only 99 years, so be it.
I’m with you, Brendan. The decade ends this week, not next year. Actually, these cultural markers we call “the 80s”, “the 90s”, and so forth, often begin and end on dates in other decades. The clearest example is the 90s, which ended on 9/11/2001. The last couple years of the 80s felt like a new cultural era that belonged in the 90s. But I was quite young then. I think Lileks has the 90s starting in the late 80s and ending on 9/11. Right now, I can’t say when the aughts will end. But the decade ends within days.
The aughts will end when, in late fall of 2010, Obama is forced to resign after Orly Taitz finally proves that he was born in Kenya. 😛
Or when the Salahis manage to get the reality show they want from crashing the White House. Thus will last for five shows, right up to their arrest. And boy, they are in deep. The WaPo is running a week long expose on them. When the WaPo decides it wants your head on a pike, you’d better start pike shopping.
I have a little quibble here. To describe a change of meaning that occurred in the course of a single year (1999-2000) as an evolution is, I believe, a misuse of the word evolution. If something can “evolve” in a year’s time, then each new car model is an evolution. Could we just say that between 1999 and 2000 people started using those words differently? (Which, after all, is what language is about.)
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