eighties

noun

1. (form-of, plural)plural of eighty
2. (plural, plural-only)The decade of the 1880s, 1980s, etc.

   “Only kids born in the eighties remember this song!”

   “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.”

3. (plural, plural-only)The decade of one's life from age 80 through age 89.

   “Only folks in their eighties remember this song!”

4. (plural, plural-only)The range between 80 and 89.

   “No wonder I'm sweating, it's in the eighties!”

adj

1. (not-comparable)From or evoking the 81st through 90th years of a century (chiefly the 1980s).

   “Sue picked a playlist of eighties music for the dinner to remind her wife of that night they met all those years ago.”

   “These publications can, however, be linked to a very eighties trend initiated among African American women writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker whose most distinguished novels deal with previously untold stories set deep in America's imperialist, slave-owning past.”

   “Next to her, a woman with puffy sleeves, bright bubblegum makeup, and big eighties hair spoke melodiously into a microphone.”