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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

millennial.

Thousand-year-old; also (by extension, loosely) thousands of years old.

10 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/mɪˈlɛn.ɪ.əl/Received-Pronunciation/məˈlɛn.i.əl/Canada, General-American
  1. Thousand-year-old; also (by extension, loosely) thousands of years old.

    not-comparable
  2. Occurring every thousand years.

    not-comparable
  3. Occurring at, or relating to, the beginning or end of a millennium.

    not-comparable
  4. Referring to the thousandth anniversary of an event or happening.

    not-comparable
    a millennial fair
  5. Often capitalized: of or relating to, or characteristic of, people born in the last two decades of the 20th century from around the early 1980s to the mid 1990s (with 1996 births cited as the last Millennial year), and who reached adulthood early in the third millennium C.E.

    alt-of · broadly · capitalized · not-comparable · often
    the millennial generation
    He was suffering from a typical millennial problem: Which is the correct emoji to use?
  6. 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”).

    not-comparable
    the millennial judgment
Where this word comes from

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.

noun/mɪˈlɛn.ɪ.əl/Received-Pronunciation/məˈlɛn.i.əl/Canada, General-American
  1. 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.

  2. A thousandth anniversary; also, a celebration of such an anniversary.

    obsolete · rare
Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.