Meaning & use

millennial

noun·Everyday

A person born roughly between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s to early 2000s, who came of age around the turn of the millennium.

See it in a sentence

As a millennial, she grew up alongside the rise of the internet and mobile phones.

Marketers often study how millennials shop differently from earlier generations.

A note on using this word

Millennial is a generational label with fuzzy edges; exact birth-year ranges vary between sources, but it always refers to the generation preceding Generation Z.

Words with a similar meaning

generation y

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

Another way to use it

2. adjective

Relating to or characteristic of this generation, or occurring once every thousand years.

The city held a millennial celebration to mark a thousand years since its founding.

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