Definition of "Nineties"

Seventies UFO fans also referred to “close encounters,” including the consciousness-raising “close encounter of the third kind,” in which humans and aliens meet. But UFOlogy has gone through a radical change, and in the Nineties the terms of the past are largely obsolete. During the past decade, for instance, literally thousands of people have come forward to say they’ve been kidnapped, or “abducted,” by short, large-headed, thin-lipped entities with saucer eyes.

1990 December, D. Stacy, T. Sanda, “The alien almanac”, in Omni, volume 13, number 3, pages 97–105

Failure became a buzz word when the dotcom bubble burst in the late Nineties. Many paper millionaires instantly became part of the "90 per cent club" (people who had lost 90 per cent of their wealth, or more). The casualties got together and "dot-commiserated".

2003 July 29, Helen Kirwan-Taylor, “Rock bottom? We're on a high”, in The Telegraph

The house will be transformed—it will be the Eighties. Not the real Eighties but the Naughties version (Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, Naughties) where pink and black come in organic cotton as opposed to stretch polyester.

2011, Kathryn White, Emily Green and Me‎, Penguin

For thirty-six years the Lost Property office was managed by Maureen Beaumont, and when I went there to interview her, back in the late Nineties, she told me people didn't seem embarrassed about what they'd lost. She'd known men collect stashes of porn, or blow-up dolls.

2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, page 196

Author of The Rise of the Creative Class and many other tomes along similar themes, since his self-described conversion in the late Nineties, he [Richard Florida] has preached to all who will listen his doctrine of creative progress, and the necessity to ‘creatify’ even our most lowly service jobs.

2013 August 15, Ann O'Dea, “Interview: Richard Florida – talent loves tolerance”, in Silicon Republic‎, archived from the original on 4 November 2016