We Still Need A Better Word For “Retiree”.

By Karen and Erica

Are you a retiree?  Do you like being called a retiree? We don’t. 

From the time we started Lustre we have been trying to come up with a new set of words for retiree, retired, and so on. We greatly dislike those words because they incorporate an idea of withdrawal from the world, something that should in no way accompany the successful end to a career.

We have failed.

First, we just couldn’t think of a great new word. We don’t love rewired or renovated or retooled. People who have retired are not turning into something else, something better than they were before. They are building on the foundations that they have spent decades creating. They are moving forward and upward. But they are still themselves. Maturation is more like it, but it seems a bit stodgy to us. We do like redirection, new chapter, next stage as descriptions of retirement. But what word then denotes retiree?

Second, we realized we couldn’t duck these words anyway. We had to use them if we intended to reach our audience. 

But we keep looking. We did an internet search for retired woman. Here is the Google AI summary:

A common and respectful word for a retired woman is retiree or pensioner. Other options include senior or senior citizen. For a more formal term, you can use grande dame or matriarch, while informal or slang terms like old lady or old-timer are also used. 

Other proposed words are elderly person, pensioner, grand dame, matriarch, old lady, old timer, OAP (Old Age Pensioner)(British). 

Jeez. Except for retiree, and possibly pensioner, these words have nothing to do with being retired. They have to do with archaic ideas of what it means to be old. It is true that nearly a century ago retirement was pegged to an age just short of life expectancy—and indeed sometimes just after—but in an era where we have a thirty year runway after retirement. to conflate retirement and age is counter-factual. Retirement no longer occurs when you reach the end of your active life. Instead, it denotes the successful end to your career, and the pivot to something else. Maybe to a life of leisure, but maybe not. Maybe exclusively to devoting yourself to your grandchildren, but maybe not. Maybe pursuing a hobby you loved and never had time to fully explore, but maybe that is not quite enough. 

You have earned the right to do whatever you want. Maybe to try another career. Maybe to try something completely new—writing music, sailing around the world, running for office. And why not? Most of us would have a hard time just sitting around for thirty years. And most of us have failed a few times, so no need to worry if it turns out your new idea does not work for you. At least you tried. You will move forward again.

What would be a descriptive word for a person who took an adventurous pivot–after having accomplished a career, over several decades? Words like brave, and intrepid, and audacious, and dashing come to mind. Someone with those traits might be called an innovator, a trailblazer, a visionary, but those words do not suggest that the person is taking off like a rocket from the foundation of a long career. 

Forbes came up with another idea:

Simply put, the official new word that replaces the old and outdated concept of retirement is actually Retirements.  This represents a functional shift that changes everything.

Implying that one might retire a few times is a grand idea–it takes away the finality of the concept, and it is consistent with what today’s workers will probably experience–no career lasting more than a few years. Sabbatical is another word along these lines. And we are told jubilar means retire in Spanish. To the extent the word incorporates the notion of jubilant, we like it!

Many of today’s workers are already thinking about breaks that would have been incomprehensible in our working lives: micro-retirements, short breaks to focus on oneself before returning to one’s job, or mini-retirements, longer breaks between jobs. These words obviously imply that retirement is temporally limited–a good thing–but fundamentally change the idea of a career, which may have other implications. 

Since we never came up with a great word, we decided to reclaim the retirement words, to make them reflect us. That has not completely worked—people’s eyes still glaze over if you say you are retired—but we hope we are making progress., and that the linkage between retirement and age and finality will soon be broken. Let’s all see where this goes. 

Do you have any words you like for retiree?