Decades

[Ardiles]

Surely this is one area where the English language falls flat on its face.  We're six months from the end of this decade and still no one has been able to come up with a name for it.  (If anyone suggests 'noughties', they'll get a slap.)

And even if you do accept 'noughties' as the natural successor to the 80s and 90s, what do you call the decade that's about start next year (ie 2010 to 2019)?  (Anyone suggesting 'teenies'?  Double slap.)

It's an etymological nightmare.  What will the compilers of 'hits of the decade' collections call their albums?  What will Radio 2 call their oldies shows in 20 or 30 years from now?  This needs sorting, and fast.

[@MacPhlea]

the tenners

[axs]

Slap me now, but noughties is fairly well accepted and quite widely used.

[axs]

and the next lot will be the tens.

[Dazzza]

Now 8976 present Turn of The Century Classics

I’ll eat my eyeballs if it happens but I think the next decade will be known as the teens.

[donkey]

What did we call 1910-1919?  Use that.  If we used nothing, then we need nothing now.

[Ardiles]

1900-1909:  Loosely speaking, Edwardian period
1910-1919:  Loosely speaking, World War I

or, more commonly

1900-1919:  The early 1900s

The first two decades of this century are probably going to get lumped together in the same way (the early 21st century), I'd have thought.

[Family at War]

As were well into the great depression - why not the Doldrums?