noun the marketing category that defines people born between the late 1950s and mid-70s. Originally the title of a sociological book by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson, 1965; moved beyond jargon when adopted as the name of a UK punk band in the mid-1970s; in 1991 Douglas Coupland employed it to describe a new generation; usage is now almost conventional. Generation Y does not appear to have caught on US, 1965