What is in a Name? 1910 – 2000 Back In The Decade!
Over the past hundred years, it has become more and more popular a cultural phenomenon to name the decade. There was the Roaring Twenties, the Thirties and Forties, Fifties and Swinging Sixties. The Seventies, Eighties and Naughty Nineties were relatively straightforward. Right up until the new millennium it took little imagination to perpetuate this new-found tradition.
Some kind of social genius, with a degree in semantics, came up with a name for the decade following the Millennium; The Noughties. It’s not like it was entirely on the money (not many people say nought-one, nought-two etc…) but it was quirky and kitsch and it rolled of the tongue. That’s what we need for this decade, something that sounds cool. It doesn’t have to be massively accurate, just passably sensible. Oh, and it has to end in “ties”, you know, to fit in with all of the other decades rhyming scheme.
What Shall We Call This Decade 2010-2019?
There are a few suggestions out there on the internet, and let’s face it, that is where this will be decided. We have the “Teens”, now obviously this doesn’t come up to the standard of ending in “ties”. We could add “ties” to “Teens” and get “Teenties”, but that is a really unwieldy word, also it doesn’t cover the period of 2010 to 2012 with the numbers ten through twelve not actually being classified as teens. We could take what we know so far to make a new word “Tenties”, but that sounds really awkward and like a vague reference to camping. The list of examples in this ball park is fairly short so I might as well include all of them, here is the last runner up, “Tweenties” (shudder).
My favourite concept word for this occasion is definitely the “Eleventies“, it may surprise you, as it seems to defy any definition itself, let alone as a defining term for this decade. My favour is spawned from the repeated utterances in the literary classic series Lord Of The Rings, and lead furthermore by the repeated references of the word such as “111EleventyOne!111!1!!” etc on internet messaging boards due to its overuse in on-line gaming. The word eleven (11) refers to the number between ten (10) and twelve (12), the word Eleventy refers to the number range of a hundred and ten (110) to a hundred and nineteen (119).
Why Will Eleventies Work?
I believe these factors; previous knowledge of the word amongst a large sub-culture (Examples of its use in context already found here , here and here) and the numerical logistical applications of the word itself, will contribute to the word Eleventies becoming the defining term used for this decade.