1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Century

CENTURY (from Lat. centuria, a division of a hundred men), the name for a unit in the Roman army, originally amounting to one hundred men, and for one of the divisions into which the Roman people was separated for voting purposes (see Comitia). The word is applied to any group of one hundred, and more particularly to a period of a hundred years, and to the successive periods of a hundred years, dating before or after the birth of Christ. The “Century-plant” is a name given to the Agave (q.v.), or American aloe, from the supposition that it flowered once only in every hundred years.