millennial
UK /mɪˈlɛn.ɪ.əl/ · US /məˈlɛn.i.əl/ adjective, noun
Forms millennials
- adjective Thousand-year-old; also (by extension, loosely) thousands of years old.
- adjective Occurring every thousand years.
- adjective Occurring at, or relating to, the beginning or end of a millennium.
- adjective Referring to the thousandth anniversary of an event or happening. “a millennial fair”
- adjective (Christianity) Synonym of millenarian (“pertaining to the belief in an impending period of one thousand years of peace and righteousness associated with the Second Coming of Christ and his reign on earth”). “the millennial judgment”
- noun (originally US, demography) Often capitalized: a person from the generation born in the last two decades of the 20th century, from around the early 1980s to the mid-1990s and who reached adulthood early in the third millennium C.E., characterized by their familiarity with computer technology and poorer financial prospects than their parents.
- noun (obsolete, rare) A thousandth anniversary; also, a celebration of such an anniversary.
Synonyms
millenarian millenniary echo boomer Generation Yer millennian
Etymology
The adjective is a learned borrowing from Late Latin mīllennium (“millennium”) + English -al (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives; and forming nouns). The English word may be analysed as millennium + -al or milli- (prefix meaning ‘thousand’) + -ennial (suffix meaning ‘years’).
Adjective sense 5 (“of or relating to, or characteristic of, people born in the last two decades of the 20th century”) was coined by the American authors William Strauss (1947–2007) and Neil Howe (born 1951) in their book Generations (1991): see the quotations.
The noun is derived from the adjective.
Webster’s 1913
- adjective Of or pertaining to the millennium, or to a thousand years; as, a millennial period; millennial happiness.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “millennial”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details