Word.ws English Dictionary

lost decade

lost decade noun: a period of economic stagnation, originally referring to Japan in the 1990s (later extended to the 2000s and sometimes the 2010s).

Noun (1)

lost decade (plural lost decades)

  1. A period of economic stagnation, originally referring to Japan in the 1990s (later extended to the 2000s and sometimes the 2010s).
    • Japan's stagnant “lost decades” of the 1990s and 2000s, while relatively comfortable for millions of Japanese and even enviable to other countries around the world, have left an indelibly negative mark.2023 September 23, Leo Lewis, “It takes a village”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 2

Noun (2) capitalized: Lost Decade

Lost Decade (plural Lost Decades)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of lost decade.

Forms of lost decade

plurallost decades
alternative formLost Decade
pluralLost Decades

Origin of lost decade

Calque of Japanese 失われた10年 (ushinawareta juu-nen).

Questions about lost decade

What does lost decade mean?
Lost decade means a period of economic stagnation, originally referring to Japan in the 1990s (later extended to the 2000s and sometimes the 2010s).
What part of speech is lost decade?
Lost decade is a noun.
What is the plural of lost decade?
The plural of lost decade is lost decades.

Words near lost decade in the dictionary

  1. Lost Colony
  2. lost control
  3. lost count
  4. Lost Creek
  5. Lost Dakota
  6. lost decade
  7. lost decades
  8. lost errand
  9. lost errands
  10. lost face
  11. lost for words

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lost decade (page history and authors); Lost Decade (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “lost decade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lost_decade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.