Millennial

How to spell millennial

10 letters · 4 syllables

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)