years
- 1Plural of year.
The bridge took nearly seven years to complete.
Several years passed before the two friends met again.
Note
Nothing irregular here: year simply takes -s, and the plural counts whichever year is meant. That could be calendar years of 365 or 366 days, lunar years of twelve lunations, or the sidereal and tropical years of astronomy. At large scales it settles into a fixed pattern, a number plus years ago: four million years ago, 2.4 billion years ago. At that scale the fine differences between kinds of year stop mattering.
- 2A very long time.
We waited years for the city to finally fix the road.
It took her years to forgive him for what he said that night.
Note
Hyperbole that works only in the plural: nobody waits "a year" in this sense, and adding a number turns it back into the literal count. It usually stands bare after a verb of time, as in took years or waited years, and it belongs to conversation, where exaggeration is expected. In careful writing, where a reader may take it literally, a plain long time or the actual figure is safer.
years is a form of year
year, noun: A period of about 365 days (366 in a leap year), roughly the time the Earth takes to go once around the Sun and through a full cycle of seasons, counted from any starting point. Full entry
- Forms
- yearyears plural
- Spelling
- year → years: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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