twenty-something
Meaning
A person, especially a young adult, between the ages of 20 and 29.
Being in one's twenties; of or characteristic of people in their twenties.
Structure
Usage
The magazine's target audience is primarily twenty-somethings living in urban areas.
She's enjoying her twenty-something years, traveling and exploring different careers.
The film is a poignant comedy about the anxieties of being twenty-something in today's economy.
Etymology
The term "twenty-something" is a modern English compound, a product of the late 20th century. It combines the cardinal number "twenty," a word of Germanic origin tracing back to the Proto-Indo-European concept of duality (dwóh₁), with the indefinite pronoun "something," from the Old English sum þing, literally "some thing." The compound's logic is transparently numerical and vague: it literally denotes "a person of twenty and some (years)," effectively creating a lexical placeholder for the entire third decade of life. This construction follows a productive English pattern for indicating approximate age ranges (e.g., thirty-something, forty-something), elegantly capturing the demographic and cultural notion of young adulthood as a defined yet imprecise life stage.
Analysis
- twenty: From Old English twēntig, meaning "group of twenty." A compound of twēn- (variant of twegen, "two") and -tig (a suffix meaning "group of ten"). Its functional role is to specify the decade of age. - something: From Old English sum þing, meaning "some thing" or "a certain thing." Its functional role is to indicate an unspecified or approximate quantity or identity.