Once-in-a-generation

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Very rare; likely to happen only once in a given generation. not-comparable

    "Trump has said that undocumented immigrants share the blame for America’s once-in-a-generation home affordability crisis, but the president-elect’s deportation plans may backfire, driving up the cost of homebuying even further."

Example

More examples

"Geologists describe Sunday's powerful earthquake in the Indian Ocean as a once-in-a-generation event."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.