Centenar

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A collection or group consisting of exactly one hundred units or items
2. An exact total amounting to one hundred of the specified things
3. A complete set or number reaching one hundred in count

Etymology: "Centenar" is a Spanish and Catalan word, and in English it is a borrowing from Spanish "centenar", a collective noun meaning a group of about a hundred, itself derived from Latin "centenarius", "consisting of a hundred". That Latin adjective came from "centum", the number one hundred, which also gave English "cent", "century" and "centipede". The Latin root "centenarius" was used for a unit of a hundred men in the Roman army. The Spanish form took on the sense of a grouping of roughly a hundred, and English adopted it as a term for an approximate hundred things, an exact total of a hundred, or a collection of such a group. The English usage is mostly a learned borrowing, so the modern Spanish sense of a set of about a hundred has carried over with little change.

Synonyms: centenary, hundredth anniversary