Definition of "eighties" in English

noun

1. plural of eighty

noun

1. 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.

2. The decade of one's life from age 80 through age 89.

   • Only folks in their eighties remember this song!

3. (temperature, rates, plural only) The range between 80 and 89.

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

adjective

1. 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.