Meaning of decade in English

decade

noun [ C ]

/ˈdek.eɪd/ /dekˈeɪd/ uk

/ˈdek.eɪd/ /dekˈeɪd/

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a period of ten years, especially a period such as 2010 to 2019

Examples

Air traffic has increased 30% in the last decade.
They predict that a large earthquake will strike the east coast before the end of the decade.
Environmental awareness has increased dramatically over the past decade.
Her acting career spanned almost six decades.
India attained independence in 1947, after decades of struggle.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Decades, centuries & the millennium

Examples from literature

Over the next decade, jet planes got bigger and faster.
The success of Strauss’s tires was made possible because of all the improvements to rubber tires that had been made during the previous decade.
In the earlier years of the fourth decade of the century, however, a change came over a considerable section of the movement.
In this book he intends to hazard certain forecasts about the trend of events in the next decade or so.
The literature of the English language has not all been written in the present decade nor in the last century.
The next decade was largely one of the settlement of new territory, and by its close the pendulum seemed to have swung decidedly backward.
What the scientist had foretold, became evident to all eyes two decades later.

(Definition of decade from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

decade | Intermediate English

decade

noun [ C ]

/ˈdek·eɪd, deˈkeɪd/

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a period of ten years:

The economy is growing at its fastest rate this decade.

Decades means a long time:

They’re enjoying new popularity after decades of neglect.

(Definition of decade from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of decade

decade

The number of wide released films, those that open in 1,000 theaters or more, has declined in the last decade, down from 151 in 2006.

From CNBC

That's an increase of about 70 percent in a decade.

From Slate Magazine

Well, maybe, but despite the hype, it has taken decades to get from the first map of the human genome to anything resembling precision medicine.

From TIME

Their numbers have dropped substantially over the last three decades, from more than 150,000 individuals to fewer than 100,000.

From Phys.Org

A decade from now, gross domestic product would be reduced by 4.6 percent.

From Washington Post

Three decades later, she's still here -- and she has plenty of stories to tell.

From Billboard

How far have we come over the last two decades?

From Huffington Post

Thousands of the primates are believed to have died from the disease in recent decades.

From Voice of America

And it has been in decline for the past few decades.

From The Hill

Some have been coming for decades, others only in the last two years.

From MLive.com

However, the market is well-supplied to 2018 and possibly to the end of the decade, it said.

From Bloomberg

In the last few decades, the money supply itself has embraced so many definitions.

From TechCrunch

The walls were covered with family photos taken over the decades.

From Chicago Tribune

He set a world record for the 400m hurdles in 1976 and holds the world record for a decade-long streak of 122 victories.

From CBS News

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.