Essential Word Roots: Perfect Ten: Dec, Cent, Mille

These words derive from the Latin roots dec ("ten"), cent ("hundred"), and mille ("thousand"). Start a practice session and see if you can score 100 percent!
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. decade
    a period of 10 years
    “I’ve been privileged to be an educator here for over two decades,” he began in a booming voice.Here to Stay
  2. decathlon
    an athletic contest consisting of ten different events
    Johnson won gold in the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Games after earning silver four years earlier in Melbourne.Seattle Times (Oct 16, 2019)
  3. decimal
    a number in a system based on ten
    She explains hard things like reducing fractions and turning them into decimals.Towers Falling
  4. decibel
    a unit of sound intensity
    On the decibel scale, 0 dB is the lower limit of human hearing.Nature (Apr 26, 2020)
  5. decimate
    kill in large numbers
    To decimate once meant “to slaughter every tenth one,” although it’s rarely used literally these days.Woe Is I
  6. bicentennial
    the 200th anniversary, or the celebration of it
    The Botanic Garden in Washington is celebrating its bicentennial this year.Washington Post (Feb 29, 2020)
  7. centennial
    of or relating to or completing a period of 100 years
    The exhibition celebrates the centennial of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote in 1920, and all the related struggles before and after.The Guardian (Mar 2, 2020)
  8. centenary
    the 100th anniversary, or the celebration of it
    There’s great excitement around preparations for the opening of several museums in Cairo on the centenary of the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.Nature (Feb 25, 2020)
  9. centigrade
    temperature scale on which water freezes at 0 degrees
    This scale is known as the centigrade, and is in use in France, Sweden, and the southern part of Europe.Negretti, Henry
  10. century
    a period of 100 years
    Nearly a century ago, after the Great Depression, the country did put artists and writers to work.Los Angeles Times (Apr 29, 2020)
  11. percent
    a proportion in relation to a whole
    The chances of winning are less than a tenth of a percent.Shooting Kabul
  12. percentage
    a proportion in relation to a whole
    But again, although most of the seeds would germinate after one year, after two years the percentage would decline, and after three or four they would not do well at all.Z for Zachariah
  13. millennium
    a span of 1000 years
    Second only to Baghdad as an intellectual lodestar of the Islamic world, Bukhara was a center of trade, scholarship, religion and culture stretching back millenniums.New York Times (Mar 9, 2020)
  14. millipede
    an arthropod with a segmented body and many legs
    In 1976–77, one of the authors of the new study surveyed insects and other arthropods—such as millipedes and pillbugs—in the protected Luquillo rainforest of Puerto Rico with sticky traps and nets.Science Magazine (Oct 15, 2018)
Created on April 30, 2020 (updated May 4, 2020)

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