Okuzeka
History vocabulary · Periods and Eras

Era

Meaning in history, with examples

/ˈɪərə/nounCore term

In history, era means: A long and distinct stage of history, usually marked by an important event, ruler or change, such as the Victorian era or the Cold War era.

In Turkish: çağ, devir, dönem

How it is used

Era sounds broader and more dramatic than period. We say the end of an era, the start of a new era, the postwar era. Age is similar but appears in fixed names: the Bronze Age, the Age of Discovery, the Age of Revolution.

Example sentences

  1. The death of Queen Victoria in 1901 was seen as the end of an era.

  2. Many factories built in the postwar era have since closed.

Common collocations

  • the end of an era
  • a new era
  • the postwar era
  • the Victorian era
  • usher in a new era
  • periodA length of time in history that historians treat as a unit because it has its own typical features, such as the Tudor period or the Tanzimat period.
  • centuryA period of one hundred years; in history, usually one of the numbered hundred-year blocks of the calendar, such as the sixteenth century.
  • periodizationThe dividing of the past into named periods, such as antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the debate about where the boundaries between them should fall.
  • chronologyThe order in which events happened, or a list or table that sets out events and their dates in that order.

More terms: Periods and Eras

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