millennial
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /mɪˈlɛ.nɪ.əl/
ipa: /məˈlɛ.ni.əl/
rhymes: -ɛniəl
Forms: form: millennials
form: Millennial
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’).
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.
Senses: examples: text: Someday, Boomers hope, Millennials will build according to great ideals their parents can only envision, act on vital issues their parents can only ponder.
ref: 1991, William Strauss, Neil Howe, “The Millennial Cycle”, in Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow and Company, →ISBN, part III (The Future), page 342:
text: Meet the Millennials, born in or after 1982—the "Babies on Board" of the early [Ronald] Reagan years, the "Have You Hugged Your Child Today?" sixth graders of the early [Bill] Clinton years, the teens of Columbine, and, this year, the much-touted high school Class of 2000, now invading the nation's campuses.
ref: 2000 September, Neil Howe, William Strauss, “The Next Great Generation”, in Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, New York, N.Y.: Vintage Books, →ISBN, page 4:
text: When we saw Millennials as kids being raised so differently, we could already make an easy prediction. We had seen this dark to bright contrast in child upbringing before many times in American history, so we already foresaw that by the time you got to 2000 you would see huge changes in people in their late teens and early 20s.
ref: 2015 August 24, Samantha Sharf, quoting Neil Howe, “What is a ‘Millennial’ Anyway? Meet the Man who Coined the Phrase”, in Forbes, New York, N.Y.: Forbes, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 29 Sep 2023:
text: In a bumper for a newsmagazine program, a reporter muses: “[It’s] the year of the yuppie, but what is a yuppie?” That’s right, fellow millennials: Not long ago, young people had so much economic opportunity that their generation was defined by its upward mobility.
ref: 2020 June 25, Eve Peyser, “In vintage TV ads, a curious fountain of hope (and cheese)”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 20 Aug 2023:
text: According to the New York Post, more millennials and Gen Zs are choosing to rent indefinitely, reshaping how property managers must think about long-term tenant satisfaction and retention.
ref: 2025 August 29, “Forever Renters: How Millennials are Impacting Multifamily Rentals”, in PointCentral, archived from the original on 21 Sep 2025:
text: “That’s exactly the point,” said Andrea Vreede, Vatican correspondent for NOS, the Dutch public radio and TV network. “The church wants to have a young saint who is a millennial, somebody who belongs to the modern age.”
ref: 2025 September 6, Angela Giuffrida, quoting Andrea Vreede, “Pope prepares to canonise London-born teenager nicknamed ‘God’s influencer’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
topics: demographics
demography
synonyms: echo boomer
Generation Yer
glosses: 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.
examples: text: The Magyar celebrates the millennial of Hungary, not of Austro-Hungary.
ref: 1896 October, Thomas Lindsay in the Canadian Magazine, quotee, “A Thousand Years of the Magyars”, in Albert Shaw, editor, The Review of Reviews. An International Magazine, volume XIV, number 4, New York, N.Y.: Review of Reviews Co., →OCLC, page 472, column 2:
glosses: A thousandth anniversary; also, a celebration of such an anniversary.
Derived terms: coronial
geriatric millennial
xennial
Related terms: frequency