Millennial

How to spell millennial

10 letters · 4 syllables

80 of the 184 people asked to spell millennial in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

The most common mistake is millenial. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

millenial millennial

What people typed instead

• millenial60 people
• milennial12 people
• millenium3 people

How to pronounce millennial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does millennial mean?

1. nounA person born roughly between the early 1980s and the mid 1990s, the generation that reached adulthood around the year 2000.
2. adjectiveRelating to a period of a thousand years or to the turn of the millennium.

Millennial in a sentence

• noun

  The marketing report focused on how each millennial spends money online.

• adjective

  The museum displayed coins of millennial age, struck a thousand years ago.

• noun

  As a millennial, she grew up alongside the rise of the smartphone.

• adjective

  The city planned a grand millennial celebration to mark the year 2000.

Where does millennial come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin mille, meaning 'thousand', joined to annus, meaning 'year', the same pairing that gives us 'millennium', a span of one thousand years. The adjective form 'millennial' appeared in English in the seventeenth century, first in religious writing about the prophesied thousand-year reign described in the Book of Revelation. Over time it broadened to describe anything connected to a period of a thousand years or to the turn of a millennium. In the late twentieth century it gained a fresh popular sense, naming the generation that came of age around the year 2000. The spelling trap lives in the middle: there is a double L carried over from mille and a double N carried over from annus, so the most reliable memory hook is to picture both Latin roots, the thousand and the year, each contributing its own pair of letters.

How the word is built

• mille- (thousand)
• -enn- (from Latin annus: year)
• -ial (adjective/noun suffix)

People who misspell millennial also struggle with

Of the Spelling Garden players who got millennial wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.

• ordnance 94% of them got it wrong
• idiosyncrasy 88% of them got it wrong
• connoisseur 82% of them got it wrong
• butte 79% of them got it wrong
• supersede 74% of them got it wrong
• millennium 72% of them got it wrong