Definition of "centum" [centum]

• Designating those Indo-European languages, including the Italic, Hellenic, Celtic and Germanic subfamilies, that merged the palatal velar stops with the plain velars k, g, gh and maintained a distinction between them and the labiovelars kw, gw, gwh. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Another strange and surprising example is the fact that the English word hundred and its Russian equivalent sto are also clearly connected with each other, and also with the various forms that Latin centum has developed into in the Romance languages."
• "The amendment would first of all remove the Latin "centum" from Article IV of the state constitution and replaced it with the more 'Merkin "cent.""
• "Whence it would appear that either the word "centum," a hundred, had slipped by mistake from Calvin's pen; or which is more probably, that, though the two Latin editions before the Editor, have the mistake, the more early ones were free from it."