millennium
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /mɪˈlɛnɪəm/
Forms: form: millennia
form: millenniums
form: millenium
Etymology: From Late Latin mīllennium, from Latin mīllennis (“1000-year”) + -ium (forming abstract nouns).
Senses: examples: text: But these seekers, too, are saved - by virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through millenniums.
ref: 1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 23:
text: The first known man-made tools, including spear points and axes, were associated with a hunting and gathering pattern that lasted, according to anthropologists, almost 200 millennia.
ref: 2013, Al Gore, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change, New York: Random House, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 37:
text: 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.
ref: 2013 March 24, Dan Pearson, The Guardian:
synonyms: chiliad
kiloannum
mul:ka
kiloyear
kyr
yearthousand
glosses: A period of time consisting of one thousand years.
examples: text: usher in the millennium
text: The Nazis' concept for the so-called Thousand-Year Reich of their infallible Leader has been described as but a pale pseudoreligious false-prophet imitation of the Christian concept of the millennium of Christ regnant.
text: After the purifying judgments which attended the personal return of Christ to the Earth, He will reign over restored Israel and over the earth for one thousand years. This is the period commonly called the Millennium. The seat of His power will be Jerusalem, and the saints, including the saved of the Dispensation of Grace, viz., the Church, will be associated with Him in His glory.
ref: 1888, C. I. Scofield, “The Seven Dispensations”, in Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth (2 Tim. 2:15): Ten Outline Studies of The More Important Divisions of Scripture, Second edition (Religion), Philadelphia, Penn.: Philadelphia School of the Bible, published 1923, →OCLC, page 25:
text: 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.
ref: 1911, Saki, “Tobermory”, in The Chronicles of Clovis:
text: 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.
ref: 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 137:
text: Conrad's later years unfolded in the shadow of the coming Millennium, when the end of the world was forecast.
ref: 2011, Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms, Penguin, published 2012, page 117:
topics: Christianity
glosses: The period of one thousand years during which Christ will reign on earth (according to Millenarianist interpretations).
examples: text: Near-synonym: utopia
text: usher in the millennium
text: 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.
ref: 1902, William James, “Lectures XIV and XV: The Value of Saintliness”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 375:
text: When rumour got afoot that in future mechanical power would be unlimited, the people expected a millennium.
ref: 1930, Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future, London: Methuen & Co., →OCLC:
glosses: A long era of universal happiness, peace, and prosperity.
examples: text: A huge fireworks display was put on in Sydney to celebrate the millennium.
glosses: The year in which one period of one thousand years ends and another begins, especially the year 2000.
Derived terms: centimillennium
decamillennium
light millennium
megamillennium
millennial
millennialism
millennially
millenniarism
millennium bug
millennium egg
millionennium
postmillennium
yester-millennium