millennium

plural millennia · plural millenniums · alternative archaic millenium

1. countableA period of time consisting of one thousand years.

   After millenniums of austerity and poverty, the age of limitless “superabundance” was at hand.

   2025 March 18, Samuel Moyn, “Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 27 Mar 2025

   4 more examples

   But these seekers, too, are saved - by virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through millenniums.

   1968, Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 2nd edition, London: Fontana Press, published 1993, page 23

   How this happens no one really knows, despite the efforts of philosophers and psychologists over two and a half millennia to study the phenomenon.

   1972, Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 25

   The first known man-made tools, including spear points and axes, were associated with a hunting and gathering pattern that lasted, according to anthropologists, almost 200 millennia.

   2013, Al Gore, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change, New York: Random House, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 37

   Magnolias are some of the most primitive of our flowering trees, and fossils dating back millennia prove that they have had little need to evolve.

   2013 March 24, Dan Pearson, “Magnolia magic: how to grow our favourite flowering tree”, in The Guardian

   Synonyms: chiliad, kiloannum, mul:ka, kiloyear, kyr, yearthousand

2. with definite articleThe year in which one period of one thousand years ends and another begins, especially the year 2000.

   A huge fireworks display was put on in Sydney to celebrate the millennium.

3. archaicAny long (and possibly endless) era of universal happiness, peace, and prosperity, predicted by various people to come about someday.

   Near-synonym: utopia

   3 more examples

   expecting a millennium

   When rumour got afoot that in future mechanical power would be unlimited, the people expected a millennium.

   1930, Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future, London: Methuen & Co., →OCLC

   For Marx, it is true, the collapse of capitalism and the communist millennium were 'necessary' in a different sense from that in which capitalism had, as he believed, evolved from feudalism. No one, at the time, had set himself the aim of 'establishing' capitalism'.

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume I: The Founders, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: powstanie (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 372

   Synonyms: utopia

alternative archaic millenium

1. ChristianityThe period of one thousand years during which Christ will reign on earth (according to Millenarianist interpretations).

   usher in the millennium

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   The Nazis' concept for the so-called Thousand-Year Reich of their infallible Leader has been described as but a pale pseudoreligious false-prophet imitation of the Christian concept of the millennium of Christ regnant.

   After the purifying judgments which attended the personal return of Christ to the Earth, He will reign over restored Israel and over the earth for one thousand years. This is the period commonly called the Millennium. The seat of His power will be Jerusalem, and the saints, including the saved of the Dispensation of Grace, viz., the Church, will be associated with Him in His glory.

   1888, C. I. Scofield, “The Seven Dispensations”, in Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth (2 Tim. 2:15): Ten Outline Studies of The More Important Divisions of Scripture, Second edition (Religion), Philadelphia, Penn.: Philadelphia School of the Bible, published 1923, →OCLC, page 25

   An archangel ecstatically proclaiming the Millennium, and then finding that it clashed unpardonably with Henley and would have to be indefinitely postponed, could hardly have felt more crestfallen than Cornelius Appin at the reception of his wonderful achievement.

   1911, Saki, “Tobermory”, in The Chronicles of Clovis

   the end of the world would be heralded by a series of spectacular and symbolic events […]. According to most commentators, this millennium had already begun.

   1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 137

   Conrad's later years unfolded in the shadow of the coming Millennium, when the end of the world was forecast.

   2011, Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms, Penguin, published 2012, page 117

2. archaicA particular long (and possibly endless) era of universal happiness, peace, and prosperity, predicted by various people to come about someday.

   Near-synonym: utopia

   2 more examples

   usher in the millennium

   But the aggressive members of society are always tending to become bullies, robbers, and swindlers; and no one believes that such a state of things as we now live in is the millennium.

   1902, William James, “Lectures XIV and XV: The Value of Saintliness”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 375

   Synonyms: utopia

1. The Kingdom of Christ on Earth, predicted by Christians to come about someday.
2. A particular long (and possibly endless) era of universal happiness, peace, and prosperity, predicted by various people to come about someday.

   Near-synonym: utopia

   Synonyms: utopia