2000s

English

Alternative forms

• two thousands
• (decade): two-thousandsies

Pronunciation

• enPR: to͞o 'thouzəndz, IPA^(key): /tuː ˈθaʊ.zəndz/ ("two thousands")
• (rare, for the decade) IPA^(key): /ˌtuː ˈθaʊ.zənd.ziːz/ (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this pronunciation?)

Noun

2000s pl (plural only)

1. The decade that began on January 1, 2000 and ended on December 31, 2009.
   • 2008, Julieanna Preston, Interior Atmospheres, Academy Press, →ISBN:

     Prominent in the 1980s and 1990s for the part it played in Postmodernism and then in Deconstruction, in the 2000s AD has leveraged a depth and level of scrutiny not currently offered elsewhere in the design press.

   • 2021 February 5, Jacob Shamsian, “Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers say an indictment should be thrown out because she wasn't sure what 'sexual activities' meant during a deposition”, in Insider‎^[1]:

     When asked about how many planes Epstein owned […] [Maxwell] answered "in the '90s he had one plane and at some point in the 2000s he had two planes," demonstrating a clear understanding of how decades are described.

2. The century that began on January 1, 2000 and ends on December 31, 2099.

   Near-synonym: 21st century

   • 1980, Peter Luck, This Fabulous Century, page 7:

     The people of the late 19th century approached the 20th with the same awe with which we see the 2000s.

   • 1996, Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software Engineering, page 476:

     The converted code will be able to handle dates that span centuries (1800s, 1900s, and 2000s at least).

   • 2011, Központi Statisztikai Hivatal, Gyula Holka, Mónika Freid, Statistics of Centuries: Statistical Curios in Hungarian History, page 153:

     In the first decade of the 2000s, there was a significant increase in traffic as a result of a Europe - wide liberalization of air transport activities, cheap tickets offered by low - cost airlines and the related price competition.

   • 2012, C.U.Liberties, “History”, in America Gone, Xlibris, →ISBN, “Centuries of Hardships, Wars, and Political Slavery”, page 55:

     The 1900s and 2000s are centuries that highlight without question the ability of the federal government to advocate elite-class dominance over the laborers equivalent to those of the great empires in world history.

   • 2019, Lee Ellis, David P. Farrington, Anthony W. Hoskin, “Homicide Rates”, in Handbook of Crime Correlates, 2nd edition, Academic Press, →ISBN, page 8:

     TABLE 1.2.1d Homicide Rates in Asian and Oceanic Countries. / Rates per 100,000 | Centuries / 1900s | 2000s

3. The millennium that began on January 1, 2000 and ends on December 31, 2999.
   • 1999, Larry Dane Brimner, The Official M&M’s Book of the Millennium, Charlesbridge, →ISBN:

     What Roman numeral might you find in the cornerstone of a building built in the year 2000? MM – the mark of the new millennium, a move from the 1000s to the 2000s.

   • 2009, Tom Osenton, “Repeating Cycles in American History”, in Boomer Density: Leading the U.S. through the Worst Crisis Since the Great Depression, Westport, Conn., London: Praeger Publishers, →ISBN, “The Current American Cycle—the Millennial Cycle”, page 32:

     The current four-phase American cycle started in the days immediately following World War II with the First Turning of the Millennial Cycle, so named because it would bridge America from one millennium (the 1000s) to the next (the 2000s).

   • 2020 November, Kashonia Carnegie, “From Me2We: The Unrecognized Key to the Rise in the Status of Women and why it’s Essential that Men Know About this Too”, in Maryam Morrison, editor, The Eden Magazine, pages 19–20:

     Only instead of cobwebs, my distraction was thoughts about the coming new millennium—the 2000s. […] Supported by the reappearance of the decade-number 1, during that decade, the decade just finished, we saw the waning masculine-energy of the 1000s doing all it could to hang on to its power and dominance.

Related terms

• two thousand and late

See also

decades in English (edit)