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Glite Dictionary
forty-niner

forty-niner

2 9.4
A person who went to California in 1849 to look for gold
  • noun
  • /ˈfɔrtiˌnaɪnər/
  • US
: cuarenta y nueve
  • The forty-niners came back from the hills with a variety of mountain and valley fevers.

Examples

  • During the great California gold rush of 1849, thousands of forty-niners made fortunes mining gold.

  • To have been a forty-niner.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • One old gentleman with an iron-gray pigtail is a "Forty-niner."

    Blog text (22)

  • Before he was a judge, he was a forty-niner, a man without roots who went from one claim to the next looking to make his fortune.

Synonyms

Niners
vsforty-niner
  • Archaic
1 9.9

People who went to California in 1849 to look for gold

is about a single participant, focusing on one person rather than a group

Surface Forms

forty-niner singular
forty-niners plural

Morphology

forty-niner = forty-nine (semi-transparent) = forty + nine + er

Formally 'forty-nine' + agentive '-er' is clear, but the specific referent (people of 1849/California Gold Rush) requires historical/cultural knowledge.

Etymology

Forty-niner comes from the year 1849, often written '49, when many people rushed to California to look for gold and were called by that year. So a forty-niner is a person who took part in the California Gold Rush of 1849.