decade
part of speech
noun (a decade, decades)
meaning for a pupil
1) A decade is a period of ten years. tree →
2) A decade is also a group of ten, like ten beads on a rosary. tree →
sense in the lessons
In the Tanakh and Jewish tradition: In Sefer Yetzirah, the "decade" is the group of ten Sefirot, the ten basic numbers or powers through which God made the world. Interpretation: Tradition reads the ten as the ten "infinitudes" or utterances that work with the 22 letters to form creation. Pythagoras's followers also thought ten was a holy number. In the primary lessons: In maths and history lessons it is used to measure time: one decade = 10 years, two decades = 20 years. It tells the reader a long time has passed. Phrases: for decades, over the past decade, a decade ago, the next decade.
examples
- The decade out of nothing has the following ten infinitudes: (Sefer Yetzirah, Kalisch 1877) tree →
- They consist of a decade out of nothing [5] and of twenty-two fundamental letters. (Sefer Yetzirah, Kalisch 1877) tree →
- The disciples of Pythagoras looked upon the decade as a holy number, and swore by it and by the Tetraktys which contain the number ten, (Sefer Yetzirah, Kalisch 1877) tree →
- A decade is ten years. tree →
- My grandparents have lived in this house for five decades. tree →
- The old tree has grown a lot over the last decade. tree →
- Two decades equal twenty years. tree →
- My mum hasn't seen her cousin for a decade. tree →
- The town has changed a lot in the past decade. tree →
- If a tree grows 30 centimetres a year, it grows 300 centimetres in a decade. tree →
note
Countable: a decade, decades. In maths: 1 decade = 10 years; 1 century = 100 years = 10 decades. «Decades» alone means «many years» (at least twenty). Do not confuse with «decayed» (rotted).
In the corpora
- Okean Elzy is a Ukrainian rock band formed in 1994 and popular for decades.
- Bamboo flowers and dies all at once every few decades, so pandas need several kinds of bamboo nearby.
- An elephant family is led by its oldest female, the matriarch, who remembers water holes, paths and dangers over decades.
- In London sparrow numbers fell by about two-thirds in a few decades, and scientists still argue why.
- Grown-ups need friends too, and many keep best friends for decades.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «decade» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.