millennial
mil·len·nial
adjective
relating to a millennium or span of a thousand years
Origin
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.
Phrases
- geriatric millennial
- millennial cringe
- millennial gray
- millennial grey
- millennial humor
- millennial pause
- millennial pink
- millennial whoop
Related words
Pertaining to
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.