Decade

A decade is a period of ten years. It contains about 520 Tuesdays and roughly 5.26 million minutes, most of which are not noticed until the decade is over.^[1]

Ten years is a long time, but a decade is longer, because it has a name.

When a decade starts

Whether a decade begins in a year ending in 0 or a year ending in 1 is the oldest argument in the field of counting. The Zeroists hold that the 1990s plainly began in 1990, since it says so on the front. The Oneists point out that the calendar has no year 0, so the first decade began in year 1, and every decade since has been running one year late without telling anyone.^[2]

The dispute is settled every ten years and resumes the following morning.

Speed

Decades are not all the same speed. Research has found that the end of a decade arrives about 40% faster than the beginning, and that everyone asked during the final year of one says “where did that go?”, usually while looking at a photograph of themselves.^[3]

In 1960 the Society for Big Numbers proposed replacing the decade with an eleven-year unit, to give everybody a little extra time. The proposal was rejected after a consultation lasting ten years.

See also

• Time – what decades are made of
• Minute – a decade in very small pieces
• Tuesday – about 520 of them per decade

References

1. Tenner, T. (2000). Or Was It 2001? Calendar Press.
2. Zero, Z. & One, O. (1999). “The Front of the Decade”. Counting Quarterly, 0: 1.
3. Ago, L. (2019). Where Did That Go? Hindsight Books. p. 10.