saeculum

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saeculum

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Learned borrowing from Latin saeculum.

saeculum (plural saeculums or saecula)

1. (historical, Roman) A cyclical period of time, roughly equal to the time needed for the complete renewal of a human population:
   1. (originally) Any of a sequence of ages (periods of time) such that each age ends with the death of the last person remaining alive since its beginning, and the end of an age marks the beginning of the next.

      According to legend, the gods had allotted a certain number of saecula to every people or civilization; the Etruscans, for example, had been given ten saecula.

   2. (later usage) Any of a sequence of ages of set length, used to periodise chronicles and track wars.

      At the time of the reign of emperor Augustus, the Romans decided that a saeculum was 110 years.

   • 1996, Hillel Schwartz, Century's End, Currency Doubleday, page 16:

     Because new ages are retrodictive as well as prospective, Augustus had his hierarchs discover (post hoc) that his were the fifth Secular Games since the founding of Rome, and that a saeculum was historically a period of 110 years.

2. An approximately 85-year cycle in Strauss-Howe generational theory, a highly controversial sociological theory that postulates that zeitgeist and popular cultural values exist along recurring cycles.
   • 1997, The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education, Volume 19, University of Kansas, page 203:

     Despite skepticism regarding the degree of forecasting, the authors' presentation of historical events is comprehensive and arguments for their organization into a cyclical method of four era saeculums convincing.

• generation

• Saecular Games on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• saeclum (poetic)
• sēclum (poetic, rare)
• sēculum (poetic, rare)

From Proto-Italic *saiklom < *saitlom, probably from *sh₂éytlom (“lifetime, lifespan”), from *sh₂ey- (“to bind, knit, tie together, tie to, connect”) + *-tlom (instrumental suffix) (whence Latin -culum), in the sense of successive generations being linked together over time. Compare Lithuanian sėkla (“seed”), Proto-Celtic *saitlom (“life, age”), Gaulish Sētlocenia, Hittite (išhi-, “to bind”), Sanskrit सि (si, “to bind”).

An alternative theory derives the word from Proto-Indo-European *seh₁- (“to sow”).

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key):
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key):

saeculum n (genitive saeculī); second declension

1. race, breed
2. generation, lifetime
3. the amount of time between an occurrence and the death of the final person who was alive at, or witness to, that occurrence
4. age, time, the times, an era
   • 8 CE, Ovid, Fasti 1.191–192:

     rīsit et ‘ō quam tē fallunt tua saecula,’ dīxit
     ‘quī stipe mel sūmpta dulcius esse putēs!’

     He smiled, and said: ‘‘Oh, how wrong you are about your era,
     if you think honey is sweeter than taking up money!’’

5. century
6. worldliness; the world

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• in saecula saeculorum
• in saeculum
• saeculāris

Romance descendants apparently reflect a semi-learned form */ˈsɛkolu/ for expected */ˈsɛklu/.

• “saeculum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “saeculum”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "saeculum", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• saeculum in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co.
  • the spirit of the times, the fashion: saeculi consuetudo or ratio atque inclinatio temporis (temporum)
    
  • universal history: omnis memoria, omnis memoria aetatum, temporum, civitatum or omnium rerum, gentium, temporum, saeculorum memoria
    
• “saeculum”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “saeculum”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin
• Watkins, Calvert (1985) “sē-”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, page 61
• Tucker, T.G., Etymological Dictionary of Latin, Ares Publishers, 1976 (reprint of 1931 edition).
• Sihler, Andrew L. (1995) New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN