I think people genuinely get confused that the century that has dates like 19XX was the 20th century, so they say "1900s" to cover for it. But that has an established meaning, namely 1900-1909.

I'm not going to claim to know the history of how terminology develops. But I don't think I have ever come across someone using "XX00s" to refer solely to the first 10 years of that time period.

The general rule of thumb for reading numbers is to treat every trailing 0 as a marker of an insignificant figure, so a number like "1,000,000" is presumed to have 1 significant figure and not 6. By this rule, the most natural interpretation of 1900s is that it encompasses 1900-1999.

Not to anyone I have ever known. I have never before this post today heard anyone say that "the nineteen hundreds" means 1900-1909. It always refers to 1900-1999.

I've only ever heard of 1900-1909 referred to as "the aughts" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aughts ) - which, admittedly, always sounded weird to me, but I wasn't alive then.

1700s may refer to:

- The century from 1700 to 1799, almost synonymous with the 18th century (1701–1800)

- 1700s (decade), the period from 1700 to 1709