ninetysomething birthday
- noun
:
cumpleaños de noventa y algo
- My grandmother enjoyed a big party for her ninetysomething birthday last spring.
Examples
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My grandmother's ninetysomething birthday is coming up soon.
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She celebrated her ninetysomething birthday last week.
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It’s rare to meet someone energetic during their ninetysomething birthday celebrations.
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We sent a card to our neighbor for his ninetysomething birthday this year.
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My grandmother enjoyed a big party for her ninetysomething birthday last spring.
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We sent a card to our neighbor for his ninetysomething birthday this year.
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My grandmother's ninetysomething birthday is coming up soon.
Surface Forms
Morphology
ninetysomething + birthday
The phrase is directly compositional: 'ninetysomething' signals an unspecified age in the nineties (ninety to ninety-nine) and 'birthday' is a celebration, so the overall meaning is a birthday for someone aged in their nineties. The '-something' placeholder pattern is productive and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows 'ninety', 'something', and 'birthday' can readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Ninetysomething birthday comes from saying the number ninety with the word something when people do not know or do not want to say the exact age, so you can imagine a card that reads '90-something' instead of a specific number. That's why it means a birthday for someone 'between ninety and ninety-nine'.
