lustrum

Spanish scurriers to dictionaries were intrigued and mystified by the primary meaning of lustrum: a Latin word signifying the festival at which Romans purified themselves by sacrificing to the Gods many a pig, sheep, bull.

From Time Magazine Archive

Yet his huge mike-and-movie success is less than a lustrum old.

From Time Magazine Archive

On September 15, 1928, Dictator de Rivera will have been in power for one whole lustrum.

From Time Magazine Archive

More appropriate seemed the second but obscure meaning of lustrum: a period of five years.

From Time Magazine Archive

Though scarce more than a lustrum had passed since the settlement on the shores of the Bay, long hose like the Florentine hose had become entirely old-fashioned and breeches were the wear.

From Customs and Fashions in Old New England by Alice Morse Earle

He accepted of the tribunitian power for life, but more than once chose a colleague in that office for two lustra 147 successively.

From The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus

Sary passed her hand over the lustra design on the shade and Mrs. Brewster turned to leave the room.

From Polly of Pebbly Pit by Lillian Elizabeth Roy

This led to the computation of time amongst the Romans, by lustra, or periods of five years.

From Domestic Pleasures, or, the Happy Fire-side by Frances Bowyer Vaux

All the sunny glow of the great Roman's genius seems reflected in this revival of his sentiments, albeit under varying physical conditions, well-nigh three hundred and fifty lustra afterwards.

From Allan Ramsay Famous Scots Series by William Henry Oliphant Smeaton

Thus passed away two lustra of her life, and as yet my daughter remained nameless upon the earth.

From The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 3 by Edgar Allan Poe

In the evolution of the Spanish government the stages will be counted by lustrums.

From Time Magazine Archive

They counted their ages and eras, which they inscribed in their books every twenty years, in lustrums of four years.

From Vestiges of the Mayas or, Facts Tending to Prove that Communications and Intimate Relations Must Have Existed, in very Remote Times, Between the Inhabitants of Mayab and Those of Asia and Africa by Augustus Le Plongeon

George III. had been on the throne not less than three lustrums, and most of the important actors of the period of '45, were dead;—many of them, in a degree, forgotten.

From The Two Admirals by James Fenimore Cooper

Forty-seven; I'll no' deny it, Lundie; and if I get Mabel, there'll be just a wife for every twa lustrums.

From Pathfinder; or, the inland sea by James Fenimore Cooper

Dost thou not envy that smirk young knave with his five lustrums, though it goes hard with him to purchase his kid-gloves?

From The Bertrams by Anthony Trollope