secolo

Secolo is the Italian word for century, a unit of time used to denote a period of about one hundred years. In Italian, centuries are expressed by placing the ordinal number before the noun, as in il XIX secolo or i secoli del Novecento. The exact boundaries of a century are conventional and can vary by tradition: some scholars define the nineteenth century as the years 1801–1900, while others use 1800–1899. In everyday usage, the century is often tied to calendar numbering, such as the twentieth century, though historical dating may adopt different conventions.

Etymology and usage: the word secolo derives from Latin saeculum, which in antiquity meant an age or generation and, by later usage, a fixed 100-year interval. The term entered Italian from Latin and medieval vernaculars, evolving to its present meaning of a 100-year time span or a historical era identified with a named century.

In historiography and culture, secolo is used to structure historical analysis and discourse. Phrases such as “secolo delle esplorazioni” or “secolo della tecnica” appear in literature about broad eras. In modern scholarship, the expression secolo breve or the short twentieth century denotes a roughly 1914–1991 period that, while not a calendar boundary, captures a rapid sequence of global upheavals typical of the 20th century. The concept highlights how different scholarly communities segment time to foreground particular dynamics of a given era.