Word.ws English Dictionary

duodecade

duodecade noun: a period of twelve years.

Noun (1)

duodecade (plural duodecades)

  1. A period of twelve years.
    • Each Chinese New Year during a "Jupiter return"—when a duodecade has passed and the Chinese zodiac animal of your birth year comes back around—it is expected that you find some red underwear to put on for the special occasion.
    • A second part is meadow-land, and every twelve years this is divided into as many parts as there are holders of village rights, and each one receives a share, of which he has the exclusive use until the redivision at the end of the duodecade.1880, The Popular Science Monthly, page 471

Noun (2)

duodecade (plural duodecades)

  1. (nonstandard) A period of two decades, a period of 20 years.
    • When I divide the past sixty years, 1706-65, into twenty-year periods, [I discover that] in the first duodecade, 702 people died, that is, an average of 35 a year. In the second period to 1745, 850, or 42i/$ each year, perished.1996, Mary Lindemann, Health & Healing in Eighteenth-century Germany, →ISBN
    • McIntosh sampled four to six consecutive Leet Court sessions, usually covering two to three years, in each twenty-year span or 'duodecade' of her period. Her f1gures therefore provide a minimum number of communities involved ...1999, Reformation

Forms of duodecade

pluralduodecades
alternative formdodecade

Origin of duodecade

Borrowed from Late Latin duodecas (“twelve”), from Ancient Greek δυωδεκάς (duōdekás, “twelve”). Equivalent to duodec- + -ade.

From duo- + decade.

Questions about duodecade

What does duodecade mean?
Duodecade means a period of twelve years.
What part of speech is duodecade?
Duodecade is a noun.
What is the plural of duodecade?
The plural of duodecade is duodecades.

Words near duodecade in the dictionary

  1. duocylindrical
  2. Duodao
  3. duodec-
  4. duodeca-
  5. duodecad
  6. duodecade
  7. duodecades
  8. duodecads
  9. duodecagon
  10. duodecagonal
  11. duodecagons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: duodecade (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “duodecade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/duodecade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.