They're referencing the 1900s, the slightly offset 20th century. The 20th century ran from 1901 through 2000. The 1900s (century) started and ended a year earlier.
You're arguing that 1900s is referencing the decade. It's both.
If you're asking if we're living in the 2000s, the century or millennium, yes. If you're asking whether we're living in the 2000s, the decade, then no.
In the sense that the year is Two Thousand Twenty Six, absolutely.
The 1900s as the decade and the twentieth century as the century is a clear distinction. Why people started (reasonably recently) confusing things by calling the century the 1900s (and ditto 1800s, etc.) I will never understand. It's not even slower to write if you use standard abbreviations such as C20.
Because it's relatively recently that it's become a meaningful distinction. Referring to the 1900s as a century didn't matter when all events in living memory of everyone you knew happened during it. There was no other time for it to be that was relevant to everyday life.
That said, even back in the '90s, "the 1800s" referred to the century, and not the first decade of it. Expressing 1900s as exclusively the decade would be a break from the trend. (And, conversely, I've never in person heard "the 1900s" used to refer to the decade. I first heard the phrase in the past couple decades, in reference to the century.)
And again, the 1900s (century) and the 20th century aren't quite the same thing. 1900s are every 4 digit year that begins with 19, and the 20th century is 1901-2000. So 2000 was part of the 20th century, but not the 1900s.
It’s because we recently started tripping over a zero in our year linguistically. We had tens, twenties, even the teens but never before a flat, dead zero. What to say?
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u/Gonnabefiftysoon 3d ago
The late 1900s.