# centum

Pronunciation: say "KEN-tuhm" /ˈkɛntəm/

## Adjective

1. Describing an Indo-European language in which the Proto-Indo-European palatovelar stops merged with the plain velars rather than becoming sibilants.
   - Simple: Describing an Indo-European language that kept an old hard 'k' sound instead of turning it into an 's'-like sound.
   - _Linguists describe Latin and Greek as centum languages._
   - _The centum branches kept the palatovelars as plain k-sounds._

## Noun

Pronunciation: say "SEN-tuhm" /ˈsɛntəm/

2. A perfect score of 100 out of 100 in a subject, especially in a school board examination. *(India)*
   - Simple: Full marks, 100 out of 100, in one subject on a school exam.
   - _He celebrated a centum after months of grueling review._
   - _Only two students in the whole district scored a centum in physics this year._

## Other meanings

- (noun) A set of one hundred verses connected by a shared meter or common topic, known in Sanskrit as a satakam.

## Origin

**Meaning 1** — Centum, hundred, and satem are doublets. Centum is a learned word taken from Latin centum, meaning "hundred," and English records of it go back at least to the 1890s. Linguists use it as a textbook case of a word that held on to an original velar stop, unlike Avestan satəm.
**Meaning 2** — A calque of Sanskrit "śataka" ("a hundred; a satakam"). The sense of a perfect exam score is explained by 100-point academic grading in India.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/centum (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).