(jen.uh.ray.shun WY)
n.
The cohort of people 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.
Related Words:
Category:
I think its interesting that I have not even seen anywhere why the Generation after me is called Generation Y..and it is interesting.
While watching a TV special in the early 90's I saw at the end that sociologists were alreadt Grappling with what to call the Generation after X???..I remember hearing ubsrd names like The SEGA Generation..because at the time SEGA video games were popular..INITIALLY the Term Generation Y was somewhat of an insult to the Babies at the time I watched this show,,They said they didn,t have time to wirry about the nrxt "Gen sine Gen X ws so bud=sy meing imoirtant by claiming they were un-important...
yet in the late 90's I hsd hesrd s brillisn interpetation og GENERATION Y and it does fit very well..Generation X was because we were UNKNOWN...They could not do the math on us..the X factor.
Generation Y? coming after X was just a simple alphabet thing? except what it morphed into was GENERATION "WHY" and sure enough it fir...
they all questioned everything they saw..much like the Xers.
So although the Y would seem a choice based off of something sily like alphabetical order..which it was,..the Y has taken on the meaning of
why
New words. 2013.