Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
📼 The 1990s 👴 Ages 90-99
nineties

nineties

1 2.1
The years from 1990 to 1999 in a century
  • noun
  • /ˈnaɪntiːz/
translation icon : los noventa
  • He naturally has no direct memory of what his father, Ebenezer Bean, was doing in the Gay Nineties.

Look, I have a caboodle, like an old school nineties caboodle.

Examples

  • The next year, when The Catcher in the Rye was published, he abruptly switched to Vedanta and often studied with Swami Nikhilananda at the Vedanta center in the East Nineties.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • This hotel, once restored, will allow us a rare glimpse of our past, the Gay Nineties, with all its brash effervescence.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • His poems have appeared most recently in After Azilan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (Godine, 1992).

    Fiction book (1993)

  • Ghali, Boutros Boutros, "Egyptian Foreign Policy in the Nineties," Mediterranean Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 3, 1990, pp. 26-35

    Academic text (1999)

  • In a nineties forum on feminism and pragmatism, the eminent American philosopher Richard Rorty suggested the term "prophecy" to describe, indeed praise, what feminist theorists working in the domains of philosophy and political theory were all about.

    Academic text (2001)

  • In the position statement "Foreign Language Programs in the Middle School of the Nineties," the National Council of State Supervisors of Foreign Languages (1994) expressed their support for the following foreign language program principles: (1) foreign language for all students, (2) proficiency-oriented goals, (3) proficiency-oriented techniques, (4) proficiency-based curriculum, and (5) content-based teaching (61).

    Academic text (2001)

  • The Nineties were marked by the rise of the internet and significant cultural shifts.

  • Many popular television shows from the Nineties continue to influence modern entertainment.

  • Fashion trends from the Nineties, such as flannel shirts and baggy jeans, are making a comeback.

Compounds

mid-nineties
6.2

A person who is about 95 years old

How Late

nineties
1 2.1
seventies
1.7
fifties
28 2.2
twenties
51 1.1

Surface Forms

nineties singular
nineties plural

Morphology

nineties = ninety (transparent) = nine + ty + s

Regularly formed from 'ninety' with plural -s; as a decade label ('the nineties' = 1990–1999), the meaning is a straightforward extension of the number.

Etymology

Nineties comes from ninety ('nine tens') plus the plural ending -ies, so it names the decade of years from 1990 to 1999, the '90s'.