Generation Y
(jen.uh.ray.shun WY)
n.
A person who is part of the generation born in 1978 or later. Also: Yer, Y-er.
Example Citation:
"Marketers know them and love them as Generation Y or the Echo Boom, a cohort that is more than 50 percent larger than the 45 million strong Generation X."
—Julie Connelly, "A Ripe Target for Web Retailers, Teens Keep Heading to the Mall," The New York Times, September 22, 1999
Earliest Citation:
Most university graduates with general degrees, myself included, are capable of being productive members of society. It is not through lacking work experience: paradoxically, it is the collective stupidity in our thinking that a university degree, the only necessity of the generations before us, would be enough to guarantee financial independence for Generation X as it did for Generation Y.
—Scott L. Kuehl, "Am I obsolete?," The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario), July 22, 1992
Notes:
People born in 1978 or later are known as Generation Y because they came after Generation X, the cohort born between 1965 and 1977. Since Generation Y is composed mostly of the children of the Baby Boom Generation (1946 to 1964), a synonym for Generation Y is the Baby Boom Echo.
