Learned borrowing fromLatincentum(“hundred”), attested at least since 1890s. Its use in linguistics is due to it being a canonical example of a word retaining an original velar stop, as opposed toAvestan𐬯𐬀𐬙𐬆𐬨(satəm).Doublet ofhundred andsatem.
2003,Johanna Nichols,Archaeology and Language II: Archaeological Data and Linguistic Hypotheses:
Table 10.1 shows the relative chronology ofcentum andsatem entries to the west. Along each trajectory,centum languages precedesatem languages, and the frontier languages, thos most clearly showing peripheral type shift, arecentum.
(Sanskrit and other Indian philology)Satakam, set of one hundred verses connected by the same metre or topic.
1847, William Taylor,Madras Journal of Literature and Science:
Tonda-mandala-sātacam, acentum of verses on the Conjeveram country, No. 148, C. M. 73. Thesātacam is a poem of one hundred stanzas, in its appropriate metre.
2017,Language, Culture and Power: English–Tamil in Modern India, 1900 to Present Day:
Norman Cutler'sSongs of Experience: The Poetics of Tamil Devotion (1987) provides a partial translation, choosing to translate just 50 hymns from the first twocentums and a fewphalasrutis, or the signature stanzas.
“centum”, inCharlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879),A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
“centum”, inCharlton T. Lewis (1891),An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
"centum", in Charles du Fresne du Cange,Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
