Eighties

How to spell eighties

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce eighties

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does eighties mean?

1. nounThe numbers, years, ages, or readings in the range from eighty to eighty-nine.

Eighties in a sentence

• The band first became famous in the eighties.

• Her grandfather is still cycling in his eighties.

Where does eighties come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word builds on 'eight', which comes from the Old English 'eahta', a native Germanic number word with close cousins across the family: German 'acht' and Dutch 'acht' both descend from the same ancestor, and the deeper root reaches back to Proto-Indo-European, the same source that gives Latin 'octo' and Greek 'okto'. The tens form 'eighty' grew from Old English 'eahtatig', literally a 'group of eight tens', where the old '-tig' suffix is the distant relative of the modern word 'ty' in numbers like sixty and ninety. The plural 'eighties' then simply adds the regular plural ending, with the spelling shifting the final 'y' to 'ies' as English usually does. The fossilised 'gh' in the spelling is the giveaway trap: it once marked a guttural sound that English speakers stopped pronouncing centuries ago, leaving a silent cluster that no longer matches how the word sounds. That silent 'gh', paired with the 'ei' order, is why the spelling looks so much harder than the simple sound suggests.

How the word is built

• eight (the number eight)
• -y (forming the tens word eighty)
• -ies (plural with y changing to i)