hundred


Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Financial, Acronyms, Idioms, Wikipedia.
Related to hundred: Hundred Years War

hundred

1. the cardinal number that is the product of ten and ten; five score
2. a numeral, 100, C, etc., representing this number
3. Maths the position containing a digit representing that number followed by two zeros
4. History an ancient division of a county in England, Ireland, and parts of the US
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Hundred

(German, Hundertschaft), a social and military organization among the ancient Germanic peoples during the period of transition from the primitive communal system to feudalism. The popular assembly of the hundred met under an elected hundred-leader and decided judicial, administrative, and other questions; the hundred was the basic unit of allotting troops among the Germanic tribes and tribal federations.

In continental Europe the hundred disappeared with the rise of feudalism. In England it gradually came under the authority of the king, in the person of the bailiff. The hundred endured until the late 19th century as an administrative-territorial unit with limited administrative and police functions. Several hundreds formed a shire.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
References in classic literature ?
"I understand," answered Porthos, "I understand you perfectly, on my honor; two hundred louis, each of us, would be making a pretty thing of it; but what will people say?"
View in context
Pa will be in no hurry to give me more money soon, and I want, at this moment, near a hundred dollars' worth of articles of dress to make a decent appearance.
View in context
At the rate of sixteen dollars to the ounce, the pan had contained seven hundred and odd dollars.
View in context
We were to see much of the Black Hundreds as the days went by.
View in context
By half-past eight it is doubled; by nine it is trebled; by ten it is multiplied sixfold; and by eleven the roar has become an incredible babel of one hundred and eighty thousand conversations an hour, with fifty new voices clamoring at the exchanges every second.
View in context
He emptied the hundred gold pieces into her lap in a glinting, tinkling stream.
View in context
I left fifteen hundred pounds with my wife, and fixed her in a good house at Redriff.
View in context
In these simultaneous observations they thought themselves justified in estimating the minimum length of the mammal at more than three hundred and fifty feet, as the Shannon and Helvetia were of smaller dimensions than it, though they measured three hundred feet over all.
View in context
"Twelve hundred to my tailor," continued the abbe; "the fellow has made me take back seven suits of my people's, which compromises my liveries, and my mistress talks of replacing me by a farmer of the revenue, which would be a humiliation for the church."
View in context
Secondly, there was the account of four years more, while they kept the effects in their hands, before the government claimed the administration, as being the effects of a person not to be found, which they called civil death; and the balance of this, the value of the plantation increasing, amounted to nineteen thousand four hundred and forty-six crusadoes, being about three thousand two hundred and forty moidores.
View in context
The principal aim of his journey was to reconnoitre Lake Tchad, from which he was still three hundred and fifty miles distant.
View in context
"I agree with you, my good friend; and, in fact, following this proportion for a projectile nine feet in diameter, weighing 30,000 pounds, the gun would only have a length of two hundred and twenty- five feet, and a weight of 7,200,000 pounds."
View in context

Encyclopedia browser ?
Full browser ?