millennial

Definition

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

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.

Example Sentences

• "The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee / About his shadowy sides: above him swell / Huge sponges of millennial growth and height; […]"
• "But I would urge you to resist the temptation to swoon into "Waking Life" as though it were a dizzy millennial throwback to a 60's trip movie."
• "As for Mr. [Thomas] Pynchon's conjuring of millennial New York, it's a total mishmash."

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