0 A person's eighties are the period in which they are aged between 80 and 89: --
Margaret Thatcher was the UK prime minister in/during the eighties.
The temperature is expected to be in the eighties tomorrow.
My grandmother is in her eighties.
1 the numbers 80 through 89: --
My grandmother is in her eighties (= between 80 and 89 years old).
Ronald Reagan was president in the eighties (= between 1980 and 1989).
The temperature is expected to be in the eighties (= between 80° and 89°) tomorrow.
In the eighties and nineties, this trend was reversed due not only to internationally enforced structural adjustment programmes, but also as a result of growing internal popular dissatisfaction.
Having lived into his eighties, he had observed the introduction of timbering as an industry, and even seen new crops introduced and old varieties of yam become scarcer.
His entrance, nearly always on time, was magisterial, but somewhat slower in his late eighties.
She was still dancing, writing, and playing the piano until well into her eighties, when ill health intervened.
As stated previously, privatisation policies were part of a broader set of state responses to the fiscal and legitimisation crises of the seventies and eighties.
During the late seventies and early eighties, the struggle about nuclear power had all the characteristics of a contest about basic policy images.
In the early eighties different standards still used today emerged.
What we tried to do with the credit controls in the eighties was the same.