Common Era. Synagogues have been excavated here dating from the first century of the Common Era. See also CE. Common Era American Dictionary. What is the pronunciation of Common Era? Browse Common Agricultural Policy. Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes. Image credits. Word of the Day kind-hearted. About this. Blog Outsets and onsets! Read More. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.
Why do people use the latter terminology? For one thing, I find it confusing. But moreover, there is only one letter of difference between the two terms, whereas with BC and AD, the terms are clearly different and I find it easier to distinguish!
Wikipedia, Anno Domini article :. For example, Cunningham and Starr write that "B. Common Era notation is used in many schools and academic settings.
Later on, it was found Jesus likely wasn't born that year , but a few years earlier i. Marking it as the "Christian Era" or more commonly, the "Common Era" allows the same epoch to be used even though the best calculation for Jesus's birth has changed.
While Christians make up a very large chunk of the world's population, they are no where near the majority. When "Christian Era" is used, it's still clear what epoch is being referred to i. Modern dates are understood in the Western world to be in the Gregorian calendar, but for older dates writers should specify the calendar used.
Dates in the Gregorian calendar in the Western world have always used the era designated in English as Anno Domini or Common Era, but over the millennia a wide variety of eras have been used with the Julian calendar.
While this issue always seems to get mired in arguments about political correctness, I'd offer another perspective. They're inconsistent. It's very strange that going across the arbitrary division line between two years also requires a change in the language of abbreviation. Also, traditional convention says that BC comes after a date e.
While that convention is no longer universally maintained, it's odd and confusing. They're prone to misinterpretation. In particular, the language inconsistency noted above has given birth to a widely-held misconception that AD is an English abbreviation for after death i. Obviously this is wrong, but it was actually the first explanation I heard as a child, which then caused great confusion when I encountered a teacher telling me that it meant something else in some obscure dead language.
I'm not alone in having heard this false etymology, as many internet discussions will attest. They're literally wrong. As noted in a previous answer, the birth of Jesus Christ is now estimated by most scholars to have occurred at least a few years earlier. I've seen everything from 7 to 2 BCE -- and yes, in this particular sentence, using the abbreviation BC seems to me an oxymoron.
In any case, "common era" solves this problem by just admitting that we're using a common convention, which even Christian scholars now widely regard as inaccurate. But it's still a convenient and "common" way of referring to our "era" of year reckoning. Read More. November 08, To top. English American. Sign up for free and get access to exclusive content:. Free word lists and quizzes from Cambridge. Tools to create your own word lists and quizzes. Word lists shared by our community of dictionary fans.
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