1800s vs. 1900s

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While for me the 1800s refers to the period from 1800 to 1899, the 1900s refers to the decade from 1900 to 1909, not the entire century.

This is a similar matter for me. Probably because I lived some of my life in the 20th century.

If you said "the 1900s" I would understand it to mean the whole century. Though its usually called "the Twentieth Century". Funny. But even now that the 1900s are over you rarely hear folks say "back in the 1900s".

I dont know what your supposed to call the decade from 1900 to 1909.

For most of my life they just called it "the turn of the century". But for the last 17 years everyone stutters when that phrase starts to emerge from their mouths, as they stop to amend the phrase to "the turn of the 20th century". Lol!

But some folks do say "the 2000's" when they mean just the years from 2000 through 2009. So using the "1900's" to mean just the first decade of the 20th Century has some logic. I dunno.

The 1900's is an entire century to me. I was born in the last quarter of the 20th century, and I know that things were very different in the early 1900's then they were in the 1980's-90's. I think it's weird when people talk about the "early 2000's" as if it's ancient history now, because we're still *in* the early 2000's, and this is just a guess but I don't think we're going to make it to the end of another millennium.

Whenever we start threads about the past few decades it makes me feel old when I see posts by people who were still infants or weren't even born yet. Sheesh.