Wednesday 5 February 2014

What decade are we in anyway?

There are some decades that just lend themselves to a catchy name - the Roaring Twenties, the Swingin' Sixties, and the err... Noughties! Since the Twenties (should it have a capital?) every decade has been easily described by the leading number in the decade and adding "ies" at the end.

We struggled a bit to come up with something for the last decade mainly because the word nought is not used by speakers of American English it is always zero. But eventually it took hold and pretty much everyone describes the decade as the Noughties if only for the reason that we all love a good play on words.

So the next decade, "The New Twenties", is covered (whether it is roaring or whimpering we don't know) but we are stuck without suitable nomenclature for the current one. Options put forward so far are "Oneders", "Onesies", "Deccies", "Tennies", "Tensies", "Tenies", "Tenties", "Teenies", "Tenners", "Teens" and "Tweens". Each have their attractions and also confusions.

Onesies, the all-in-one slouch outfit, coincidently make a big impact on the "fashion" world in this decade so I suggest this could be the favourite although we are really in the tens not the ones.

All the "ten" prefix options are pretty good, are numerically correct and it comes down to the comfort of pronouncing them. It might be that another word needs to be established in front of it to describe the decade, but the lead contender here is probably "austerity" which alliteratively is pretty hopeless with everything.


The Deccies could be a good outside bet here, since it won't be confused with anything else, satisfies scientists and mathematicians and is easily pronounced. There could be an argument on how many c's are included, but I believe two is minimum. I think Bill Bryson should be the judge of this one.

There are always time sections of a decade so early-Deccies, mid- and late-Deccies are all satisfactory. And if Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and all can keep going for another 6 years I can definitely see this become "The Decadent Deccies". But for now we can keep calling it "this decade". Boring.

 

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