nineties

alternative 90s · alternative '90s · alternative Nineties

1. pluralplural onlyplural of ninety
2. pluralplural onlyThe decade of one's life from age 90 through age 99.
3. pluralplural onlyratestemperatureThe range between 90 and 99.

   My ideal bracket of temperature ranges from the sixties up to the nineties.

alternative 90s · alternative '90s · alternative Nineties

1. The decade of the 1890s, 1990s, etc.

   1919, Harry Hamilton Johnston, The Gay-Dombeys: A Novel, Macmillan, page 172, He and his clever staff of minor blackguards exploited to the full every weakness and caries in the London Society of the 'eighties, 'nineties, and 'oughts.

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   Our readers — and contributors — are apt to elect a good deal according to years. The seventies and eighties, we may suppose, are concerned for the large educational and cultural interests of their Alma Mater; the nineties are deep in the practical and business activities; the noughties are not naughty, but still young enough to sport a fantastic costume at reunion and let the college wag as it will; the oneties are the really wise as to what the college ought to be, especially on its athletic side, but as contributors modest.

   1914, Amherst College, “Amherst graduates' quarterly”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 4, page 6

   The line was doubled in the nineties and Hillfoot station added for suburbanites in 1900.

   1959 October, G. H. Robin, “Railways to Helensburgh—a pre-electrification prospect”, in Trains Illustated, page 541

   While PSB [public service broadcasting] has always been subject to multiple influences there is no question that the nineties was a period of massive structural transformation.

   2001, Gay Hawkins, “The ABC and Rhetorics of Choice”, in Tony Bennett, David Carter, editors, Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics and Programs, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 176

alternative 90s · alternative '90s · alternative Nineties

1. not comparableFrom or evoking the 91st through 100th years of a century (chiefly the 1990s).

   I found myself attracted to his mullet even though it struck me as needlessly nineties.

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   Nineties kids are honestly "fired up" about their environment. Students are aware and worried that their world is being destroyed, and teachers only need to tap into that hidden stream of interest.

   1997, Catherine M. Scharle, “Environmental Children's Books Created by the Hearts and Hands of High School Students”, in The English Journal, volume 86, number 7, →DOI, pages 86–90

1. Alternative letter-case form of nineties, in the context of a specific decade (almost always) the 1890s or 1990s.

   The house will be transformed—it will be the Eighties. Not the real Eighties but the Naughties version (Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, Naughties) where pink and black come in organic cotton as opposed to stretch polyester.

   2011, Kathryn White, Emily Green and Me, Penguin, →ISBN

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   Seventies UFO fans also referred to “close encounters,” including the consciousness-raising “close encounter of the third kind,” in which humans and aliens meet. But UFOlogy has gone through a radical change, and in the Nineties the terms of the past are largely obsolete. During the past decade, for instance, literally thousands of people have come forward to say they’ve been kidnapped, or “abducted,” by short, large-headed, thin-lipped entities with saucer eyes.

   1990 December, D. Stacy, T. Sanda, “The alien almanac”, in Omni, volume 13, number 3, pages 97–105

   Failure became a buzz word when the dotcom bubble burst in the late Nineties. Many paper millionaires instantly became part of the "90 per cent club" (people who had lost 90 per cent of their wealth, or more). The casualties got together and "dot-commiserated".

   2003 July 29, Helen Kirwan-Taylor, “Rock bottom? We're on a high”, in The Telegraph

   For thirty-six years the Lost Property office was managed by Maureen Beaumont, and when I went there to interview her, back in the late Nineties, she told me people didn't seem embarrassed about what they'd lost. She'd known men collect stashes of porn, or blow-up dolls.

   2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 196

   Author of The Rise of the Creative Class and many other tomes along similar themes, since his self-described conversion in the late Nineties, he [Richard Florida] has preached to all who will listen his doctrine of creative progress, and the necessity to ‘creatify’ even our most lowly service jobs.

   2013 August 15, Ann O'Dea, “Interview: Richard Florida – talent loves tolerance”, in Silicon Republic, archived from the original on 04 Nov 2016