Today in English a hundred is always taken to be equal to 100. However, before the 18th century, it could mean other values, depending on the objects being counted. Sometimes the value of 100 was referred to as a small hundred the larger value being the long hundred or the great hundred.
The larger value originated with the Teutonic tribes that invaded England after the Romans departed; their Hundert equalled 120.
Until 1851, a Hundred was an administrative divisor used to indicate an area of a county which contained one hundred families [1] See Hundred (division).
In the study of Indo-European languages, the Centum-Satem isogloss refers to the earliest form of the word “hundred” in a language as a rough marker of the language’s place in the Indo-European language family. The words in the various languages are believed to share a deep origin; the “Centum-Satem” distinction refers to the language’s treatment of what was originally the initial velar consonant in the word.
External links
- hundred on sizes.com
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