Meaning

(informal) A 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..

Example Sentences

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.

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.

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).

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.

Word Forms

• xennials
• Xennial

Synonyms for xennial

Related Words

When Should You Use Xennial?

Use xennial when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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