nineties

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

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.

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.

From 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.

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.

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

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.

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".