millennium

Etymology

From Late Latin millennium, from Latin mīlle (“thousand”) + -ennium (from annus (“year”)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mɪˈlɛnɪəm/

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

Noun

millennium (plural millennia or millenniums)

1. A period of time consisting of one thousand years.
   • 2013 March 24, Dan Pearson, The Guardian:

     Magnolias are some of the most primitive of our flowering trees, and fossils dating back millennia prove that they have had little need to evolve.

2. (Christianity) The period of one thousand years during which Christ will reign on earth (according to Millenarianist interpretations).
   • 1911, Saki, “Tobermory”, in The Chronicles of Clovis:

     An archangel ecstatically proclaiming the Millennium, and then finding that it clashed unpardonably with Henley and would have to be indefinitely postponed, could hardly have felt more crestfallen than Cornelius Appin at the reception of his wonderful achievement.

   • 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 137:

     the end of the world would be heralded by a series of spectacular and symbolic events […]. According to most commentators, this millennium had already begun.

   • 2011, Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms, Penguin, published 2012, page 117:

     Conrad's later years unfolded in the shadow of the coming Millennium, when the end of the world was forecast.

3. A period of universal happiness, peace or prosperity; a utopia.
   • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Folio Society, published 2008, page 318:

     But the aggressive members of society are always tending to become bullies, robbers, and swindlers; and no one believes that such a state of things as we now live in is the millennium.

4. (with definite article) The year in which one period of one thousand years ends and another begins, especially the year 2000.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /milɛniɔm/, [miˈlɛnˀiɔm]

Noun

millennium n (singular definite millenniet, plural indefinite millennier)

1. millennium

Further reading

• millennium on the Danish Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^da

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

millennium n (plural millennia, diminutive milleniumtje n)

1. millennium

Etymology

From mīlle and annus.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /miːlˈlen.ni.um/, [miːlˈlɛn.ni.ũ]

Noun

mīllennium n (genitive mīllenniī); second declension

1. millennium

Noun

millennium n

1. a millennium, a period of one thousand years