decadenoun [ C ]
uk/ˈdek.eɪd//dekˈeɪd/us/ˈdek.eɪd//dekˈeɪd/B2 a period of ten years, especially a period such as 2010 to 2019
Examples
- Air traffic has increased 30% in the last decade.
- They predict that a large earthquake will strike the east coast before the end of the decade.
- Environmental awareness has increased dramatically over the past decade.
- Her acting career spanned almost six decades.
- India attained independence in 1947, after decades of struggle.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Decades, centuries & the millennium
- century
- eighties
- fifties
- fin-de-siècle
- forties
- millennial
- millennium
- nineties
- noughties
- seventies
- sixties
- teens
- the
- thirties
- twenties
Examples from literature
- Over the next decade, jet planes got bigger and faster.
- The success of Strauss’s tires was made possible because of all the improvements to rubber tires that had been made during the previous decade.
- In the earlier years of the fourth decade of the century, however, a change came over a considerable section of the movement.
- In this book he intends to hazard certain forecasts about the trend of events in the next decade or so.
- The literature of the English language has not all been written in the present decade nor in the last century.
- The next decade was largely one of the settlement of new territory, and by its close the pendulum seemed to have swung decidedly backward.
- What the scientist had foretold, became evident to all eyes two decades later.