xennial

plural xennials · alternative Xennial

1. informalA person born late in Generation X or early in Generation Y, that is, sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s; a member of the Oregon Trail Generation.First known use 21st c.

   I’m a reluctant millennial myself (or possibly — God forbid — an xennial), stuck in the pretty common category of not identifying with my so-called generation.

   2023 April 20, Casey Schwartz, “Jean Twenge is ready to make you defend your generation again”, in The Washington Post

   3 more examples

   I was born in 1980. According to some sources, this makes me a Gen Xer. According to others, I’m a Millennial. That makes me what then, a Xennial? I take online quizzes, like Pew Research Center’s “How Millennial Are You?”, and land dead between Gen X and Millennial due to my personal habits, body piercings, and so many more reasons.

   2014 September 25, Sarah Stankorb, “Glad to be a Xennial”, in GOOD

   Xennial is a term that I first used in a 2014 story for GOOD magazine, following on the heels of writers like Doree Shafrir, who in 2011 called this cusp generation’s pop-cultural misfit status Generation Catalano, after crowdsourcing the My So-Called Life–inspired term from Danielle Nussbaum on Twitter.

   2017 July 6, Sarah Stankorb, “I Made Up Xennial 3 Years Ago, So Why Is a Professor in Australia Getting All the Credit?”, in Vogue

   But there's this new group, you may know them — that microgeneration sandwiched between — who feel like they don't really belong to either group […] Love it or hate it, there's a newish name for these lost souls: the "xennials" (pronounced ZEE-knee-als).

   2017 November 10, Dwight Adams, “You're a xennial — if you're caught between Generation X and millennials”, in Indianapolis Star

   Synonyms: elder millennial, geriatric millennial, millennial cusper

plural Xennials

1. Alternative letter-case form of xennial.