# era

Pronunciation: US say "AIR-uh" /ˈɛɹ.ə/; UK say "EER-uh" /ˈɪə.ɹə/

## Noun

1. A long period of time, especially of history or of someone's activity, marked by particular events, developments or characteristics.
   - Simple: A long period of time, often in history, that is known for certain events or ways of life.
   - _The invention of the printing press ushered in a new era of mass communication._
   - _The founder's retirement marked the end of an era for the company._
2. An indefinite stretch of someone's life characterized by a particular interest or pursuit. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: A time in your life when you are really into one particular thing.
   - _After college she entered her hiking era, spending nearly every weekend on a trail._
   - _He jokes that his vinyl-collecting era ended the day he saw his credit card bill._
3. A unit of geologic time spanning tens to hundreds of millions of years, smaller than an eon and divided into periods.
   - Simple: A very long part of Earth's history, lasting tens of millions of years or more.
   - _The Cenozoic era began about 66 million years ago, after the extinction of the dinosaurs._
   - _Each era in the geologic time scale is split into shorter periods._
4. A scheme for numbering and dating years in which every year is counted from one event or moment chosen as the start.
   - Simple: A way of giving years numbers, counting from one chosen event or moment.
   - _Inscriptions from the region are dated by a local era that begins with the founding of the city._
   - _Historians have to convert between eras when one chronicle counts from a king's accession and another from the creation of the world._

## Origin

Borrowed from the Late Latin word aera.

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