Word.ws English Dictionary

yesteryears

yesteryears is the plural of yesteryear.

Meaning of yesteryear

Noun

yesteryear (countable and uncountable, plural yesteryears)

  1. (poetic) Past years; time gone by; yore.
    • To be old here, is to be respectable, and time-honored is the epithet most coveted. You see no sign of the doings of yesterday or yesteryear: the new is careful of obtruding itself, and comes into the world under matronage of the old.1840 August 2, George H[enry] Calvert, Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. […], New York, N.Y.: Wiley and Putnam, published 1846, page 5
    Synonyms:
    foretime
  2. (rare) Last year.

See all 3 meanings of yesteryear

Questions about yesteryears

What is yesteryears the plural of?
Yesteryears is the plural of yesteryear.

Words near yesteryears in the dictionary

  1. yestertide
  2. yestertime
  3. yestertimes
  4. yesterweek
  5. yesteryear
  6. yesteryears
  7. yestiddy
  8. yestie
  9. yestier
  10. yestiest
  11. yestreen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yesteryears (page history and authors); yesteryear (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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