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Meaning & use

decade

noun·Everyday

Last updated

UK/ˈdekeɪd/
US/ˈdekeɪd/

Meanings

  1. nouncountable

    A period of ten years.

    Grammar: Countable: a decade, two decades; often with a number or a descriptor like the last decade.

    Patterns

    • a decade of something
    • for decades

    The company has doubled in size in the past decade.

    It took nearly a decade to finish the bridge.

    Her career spans four decades.

  2. nouncountable

    A set of ten years counted from a year ending in zero, such as the 1980s.

    Grammar: Usually with the: the decade of the 1960s; capital letters are not needed.

    Patterns

    • the decade of the 1990s

    Pop fashion changed dramatically in the decade of the 1970s.

    The invention of the internet defined the last decade of the century.

    Which decade do you think had the best music?

Word forms

pluraldecades

Common combinations

the past decade
Housing prices have risen sharply over the past decade.
for decades
The family has lived in the same village for decades.
a decade ago
A decade ago, few people owned a smartphone.
the last decade
The last decade brought huge changes in medicine.
several decades
The recipe has been unchanged for several decades.
in the first decade of
The firm was founded in the first decade of the century.

Synonyms and how they differ

ten years
Ten years is the plain, literal phrase, while decade sounds neater when talking about a stretch of history.
era
Era is much longer and vaguer, marking a period with a distinct character, not a fixed number of years.
generation
A generation is about twenty-five to thirty years, the span between parents and children, so it is longer than a decade.
century
A century is ten decades, so it is a much bigger unit.

Word family

decadal adjective
relating to a period of ten years
decennial adjective
happening every ten years or lasting ten years
decagon noun
a shape with ten sides
decimal adjective
based on the number ten

Commonly confused: decade or decadence? decade or decay?

decade vs decadence

Decadence means moral or cultural decline or indulgence and is not related to counting years, despite the similar look.

decade vs decay

Decay means to rot or decline and is only a distant sound-alike.

Practice

If a project began in 2012 and ended in 2022, it lasted about a ___.

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