millenium or millennium

Meanings

1. 1nouncountable

   A period of one thousand years, often counted from a particular starting point.

   Grammar: Countable: 'a millennium', 'two millennia'. The plural 'millennia' is more formal than 'millenniums'.

   Patterns

   • a millennium of something
   • the next millennium
   • for millennia

   The city has stood on this site for more than a millennium.

   Many people celebrated the start of the new millennium in 2000.

   These customs have survived for millennia.

2. 2nounsingularreligion

   A period of a thousand years that some Christians expected to bring dramatic change, mentioned in the Bible.

   Grammar: Often used with 'the' in religious writing: 'the coming millennium'.

   Patterns

   • the millennium

   The sermon was about the thousand-year reign described as the millennium.

   Some groups believed the millennium would begin after a great battle.

Word forms

Common combinations

the new millennium

Fireworks lit the sky at the start of the new millennium.

for millennia

Farmers have grown rice in these valleys for millennia.

a millennium of peace

The treaty promised a millennium of peace, though it did not last.

the turn of the millennium

At the turn of the millennium, few people had smartphones.

Synonyms and how they differ

thousand years

A plain phrase with the same meaning; use it when you want to avoid the spelling difficulty or sound less formal.

Word family

millennial adjective

Relating to a millennium, or (as a noun) a person born around the 1980s–1990s.

Commonly confused: millenium or millennium or millenium? millenium or millennium or million?

Practice

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