# eighties
## English
### Alternative forms

* (of the decade) Eighties, 'eighties

### Pronunciation

* Rhymes: -eɪtiz

### Noun

eighties
* plural of eighty

### Noun

eighties pl (plural only)
* The decade of the 1880s, 1980s, etc.
** 1914, Amherst College, “Amherst graduates' quarterly”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 4, page 6:Our readers — and contributors — are apt to elect a good deal according to years. The seventies and eighties, we may suppose, are concerned for the large educational and cultural interests of their Alma Mater; the nineties are deep in the practical and business activities; the noughties are not naughty, but still young enough to sport a fantastic costume at reunion and let the college wag as it will; the oneties are the really wise as to what the college ought to be, especially on its athletic side, but as contributors modest.
** 1919, Harry Hamilton Johnston, The Gay-Dombeys: A Novel, Macmillan, page 172,
    He and his clever staff of minor blackguards exploited to the full every weakness and caries in the London Society of the 'eighties, 'nineties, and 'oughts.
* The decade of one's life from age 80 through age 89.
* (temperature, rates, plural only) The range between 80 and 89.

#### Synonyms

* '80s, 80s

#### Hyponyms

* 1880s, 1980s

#### Derived terms

* mideighties

#### See also

* octogenarian
| 18th century | 1700s · 1710s · 1720s · 1730s · 1740s · 1750s · 1760s · 1770s · 1780s · 1790s |
| 19th century | 1800s · 1810s · 1820s · 1830s · 1840s · 1850s · 1860s · 1870s · 1880s · 1890s |
| 20th century | 1900s · 1910s · 1920s · 1930s · 1940s · 1950s · 1960s · 1970s · 1980s · 1990s |
| 21st century | 2000s · 2010s · 2020s · 2030s · 2040s · 2050s · 2060s · 2070s · 2080s · 2090s |
| 22nd century | 2100s · 2110s · 2120s · 2130s · 2140s · 2150s · 2160s · 2170s · 2180s · 2190s |
| 23rd century | 2200s · 2210s · 2220s · 2230s · 2240s · 2250s · 2260s · 2270s · 2280s · 2290s |
| Decade only | 00s · 10s · 20s · 30s · 40s · 50s · 60s · 70s · 80s · 90s |
| Decade only | '00s · '10s · '20s · '30s · '40s · '50s · '60s · '70s · '80s · '90s |
| Decade only | 00's · 10's · 20's · 30's · 40's · 50's · 60's · 70's · 80's · 90's |
| Decade only | zeros/zeroes or aughts/noughties/oughts · oneties/tens/teens · twenties · thirties · forties · fifties · sixties · seventies · eighties · nineties |
| Nicknames | Gay Nineties · Naughty Nineties · Roaring Twenties · Dirty Thirties · Swinging Sixties |

### Adjective

eighties (not comparable)
* From or evoking the 81st through 90th years of a century (chiefly the 1980s).
    Sue picked a playlist of eighties music for the dinner to remind her wife of that night they met all those years ago.
** 1995, Anthony Ilona, “Crossing the River: A chronicle of the black Diaspora”, in Wasafiri, volume 11, number 22, →DOI, pages 3–9:These publications can, however, be linked to a very eighties trend initiated among African American women writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker whose most distinguished novels deal with previously untold stories set deep in America's imperialist, slave-owning past.
** 2020, Chana Porter, The Seep, New York, NY: Soho Press, →ISBN, page 169:Next to her, a woman with puffy sleeves, bright bubblegum makeup, and big eighties hair spoke melodiously into a microphone.