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yesteryear

yes·ter·year/ˈjɛstəɹˌjɪ(ə)ɹ/noun, adverb

yesteryear is spelled Y-E-S-T-E-R-Y-E-A-R: 10 letters and 3 syllables (yes·ter·year). It appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 45,947th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, yesteryear means “Past years; time gone by; yore” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of yesteryear is yesteryears.

How many letters and syllables are in yesteryear?

Letters10: Y-E-S-T-E-R-Y-E-A-R
Syllables3: yes·ter·year
In writingabout once in every 2 million words; the 45,947th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How common is yesteryear?

Yesteryear appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 45,947th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce yesteryear?

  • UK /ˈjɛstəjɪə/
  • US /ˈjɛstəɹˌjɪ(ə)ɹ/
  • /ˈjestəjøː/

Yesteryear has 3 syllables, split yes·ter·year in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-yesteryear.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of yesteryear

  • yesteryears plural
  • yester-year

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does yesteryear mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    Past years; time gone by; yore.

  2. 2

    rareLast year.

adverb

  1. 1

    In past years.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Yesteryear in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchjadis, antan (times gone by), année passée, an passé, année dernière, an dernier (last year – see also last year)
Germaneinst (times gone by), Vorjahr (last year – see also last year)
Portugueseoutrora (times gone by), ano passado, antanho (last year – see also last year)
Spanishantaño (times gone by), año pasado (last year – see also last year)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does yesteryear come from?

From yester- + year.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after yesteryear