short twentieth century
/ˈʃoɹt ˌtwɛn.(t)ɪ.əθ ˈsɛn.(t)ʃ(ə).ɹi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.76 in modern English
35
Scrabble Score
21
Letters
5
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
The period between 1914 and 1991, from the beginning of World War I to the fall of the Soviet Union.
Example Sentences
- "How are we to make sense of the Short Twentieth Century, that is to say of the years from the outbreak of the First World War to the collapse of the USSR which, as we can now see in retrospect, forms a coherent historical period that has now ended? We do not know what will come next, and what the third millennium will be like, even though we can be certain that the Short Twentieth Century will have shaped it."
- "In the wake of the end of the short twentieth century and the related collapse of the received certainties of the cold war which had shaped the understandings of European and American thinkers, it has become clear that a new integrated global industrial-capitalist system is taking shape. […] However, setting aside the issue of the overall evolution of the global system to one side, it is the case that the end of the short twentieth century has seen not merely debate in respect of the creation of an integrated system but also a concern for an apparently deepening tripolarity."
- "The year 1914 will be the crucial date for the beginning of this "short twentieth century," for the world war which began in August of that year marked a break with the classic liberal values of free enterprise, individual autonomy, and political liberty that had suffused nineteenth-century European societies."
- "[Karl] Marx’s philosophy and its concretely applied adaptations would have extraordinary consequences especially in the short twentieth century, from the outbreak of World War I through the fall of the Soviet Union."
- "The epoch from whose dreams I wish to awaken is the twentieth century, and more particularly what Eric Hobsbawm has called "the short twentieth century" between the outbreak of World War I on 1 August 1914 and the collapse of the Soviet Union on 31 December 1991—a period that was incidentally, and probably not coincidentally, the bloodiest in recorded human history."
- "The continuity that exists between the two centuries would appear to distance [Carl] Schmitt from [Eric] Hobsbawm and his description of the short 20th century. But we must squelch this first impression. […] The long 19th century can be explained as adding the "setback of over 60 years", from 1848 to 1917, to Hobsbawm's short 20th century."
Etymology
The concept underlying the proper noun was developed by the Hungarian historian Iván Tibor Berend (born 1930), and the term itself was popularized by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) in his book The Age of Extremes (1994). Like the corresponding terms long eighteenth century and long nineteenth century, it aims to define historical eras by significant events rather than by the arbitrary beginnings and ends of centuries. The common noun was probably derived from the proper noun.
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈʃoɹt ˌtwɛn.(t)ɪ.əθ ˈsɛn.(t)ʃ(ə).ɹi/
- British English: /ˈʃɔːt ˌtwɛn.(t)ɪ.əθ ˈsɛn.t͡ʃ(ʊ).ɹi/
Inflected Forms
the short twentieth century (canonical)
short 20th century (alternative)
short twentieth centuries (plural)