A young city or suburban resident with a well-paid professional job and an affluent lifestyle.
[y(oung) u(rban) p(rofessional), influenced by YIPPIE.]
yuppiedom yup'pie·dom n.
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n. Informal.
Marketing Dictionary:
yuppie
Term derived from young, urban professional, a designation that came into vogue in the 1980s. The yuppie population consists of that group of people in their thirties whose lifestyles are upwardly mobile and who represent a target audience for some advertisers, such as BMW automobiles or Fila sportswear. The term has come to have a somewhat pejorative connotation, particularly when applied to a specific individual.
Business Dictionary:
Yuppie
Acronym for young urban professional. The term was popularized during the 1980s to describe young career people having relatively high incomes and education, seeking instant success and gratification, often beyond their financial means.
Word Origin:
yuppie
Origin: 1984
Thanks to a book by two of their kind, yuppies burst on the American scene early in 1984. In an article that year titled "Here Come the Yuppies!" Time inquired, "Who are all those upwardly mobile folk with designer water, running shoes, picked parquet floors and $450,000 condos in semislum buildings? Yuppies, of course, for Young Urban [or Upwardly-Mobile] Professionals, and the one true guide to their carefully hectic life-style is The Yuppie Handbook.... Tongue firmly in chic, Authors Marissa Piesman and Marilee Hartley tirelessly chronicle the ways of the Yuppie, along with its less-known subspecies the Guppie (Gay Urban Professional) and Puppie (Pregnant Urban Professional)."
George Orwell had predicted the ruthless dictatorship of Big Brother in his novel 1984, but the figure of satire in America that year was someone entirely different. The yuppie was a person in young adulthood, living in or near a city, ambitious, successful, materialistic, and self-indulgent. Reducing ponderous terminology to its initials and adding a diminutive suffix, the authors of The Yuppie Handbook not only named the target of their satire but also identified that target as a whole new demographic group for advertisers and politicians to pursue.
With the suffix -ie, yuppie followed the pattern of other two-syllable words describing types of young people: preppie, hippie, and yippie. Preppie (1962) was a half-derisive, half-affectionate term for someone who attended a private college-preparatory school or who dressed and acted like the stereo-typically rich and success-bound prep-school student. Hippie (1965) identified a whole counterculture. Yippie (1968) came from the name of an irreverent, politically radical group of hippies, the Youth International Party.
Once yuppie was coined, other initialisms followed: buppie (1986) identified a black yuppie, suppie (1987) a Southern one, yuca (1988) a Cuban-American (with a play on the name of the yucca plant). There was even skippie (1987), a school kid with income and purchasing power. And there was the yuppie disease (1986), a.k.a. chronic fatigue syndrome (1981).
Wikipedia:
yuppie
Yuppies (young urban professionals, or less commonly young upwardly-mobile professionals[1]) is a market segment whose consumers are characterized as self-reliant, financially secure individualists.[2] Since the late 1980s, the phrase affluent professionals has been used as a synonym, stripped of negative associations with the once-homogenous market.[3]
History
Although the term yuppies had not appeared until the early 1980s, there was discussion about young upwardly mobile professionals as early as 1968.
Critics believe that the demand for "instant executives" has led some young climbers to confuse change with growth. One New York consultant comments, "Many executives in their 20's and 30's have been so busy job-hopping that they've never developed their skills. They're apt to suffer a sudden loss of career impetus and go into a power stall."[4]
Joseph Epstein is sometimes credited for coining the term in 1982;[5] however, an early printed appearance of the word is in a May 1980 Chicago magazine article by Dan Rottenberg.[6] In 1983, the term gained currency in United States when syndicated newspaper columnist Bob Greene published a story about the former radical leader of Youth International Party, Jerry Rubin, whose members were called yippies.[7] The proliferation of the word was effected by the publication of The Yuppie Handbook in January 1983, followed by Senator Gary Hart's 1984 candidacy as a "yuppie candidate" for President of the United States.[2] The term was then used to describe a political demographic group of socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters favoring his candidacy.[8] Newsweek magazine declared 1984 "The Year of the Yuppie", characterizing the salary range, occupations, and politics of yuppies as "demographically hazy."[2]
In a 1985 issue of The Wall Street Journal, Theressa Kersten at SRI International described a "yuppie backlash" by people who fit the demographic profile yet express resentment of the label: "You're talking about a class of people who put off having families so they can make payments on the BMWs ... To be a Yuppie is to be a loathsome undesirable creature". Leo Shapiro, a market researcher in Chicago, responded, "Stereotyping always winds up being derogatory. It doesn't matter whether you are trying to advertise to farmers, Hispanics or Yuppies, no one likes to be neatly lumped into some group".[2]
Later, the word lost its political connotations and, particularly after the 1987 stock market crash, gained the negative socio-economic connotations it enjoys today. By 1991, TIME proclaimed the death of the Yuppie in a mock obituary.[9]
Notable cultural depictions of yuppies
- The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe, a "satire of yuppie excess"[10]
- Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney[11] (McInerney himself has been called "the archetypal yuppie")[12]
- Fight Club, the 1996 novel and 1999 film adaptation, follows "a disenchanted yuppie ... numbed by the sterile materialism of modern life."[13]
- Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz[11] describes a later (early 1990s) evolution of the Yuppie, in which the upper tier made considerably more than the lower, supporting tier, the "slaves" of the title, who were trapped by rents and insufficient salaries into a struggle merely to stay afloat and in Manhattan
- thirtysomething, U.S. TV series, seen as a representation of "yuppie angst"[14]
- Wall Street, the 1987 film about stock traders, has been described as "encapsulation of 80s yuppie greed culture", particularly Charlie Sheen's naive 20-something character.[15]
Related terms
- Buppie is a black urban professional.[16]
- Yuppification often replaces the word gentrification; it is the act of making something, someone, or someplace appealing and thus marketable to yuppie tastes. [17]
- DINKs (also DINKY in the UK) is an acronym is for Dual Income, No Kids [Yet];[18][19] at least one authority considers this to be synonymous with "yuppie".[20]
- Yuppie Flu was a sometimes derisive, and inaccurate, term applied to chronic fatigue syndrome, before its medical legitimation.[21]
- Reporter David Brooks characterized yuppies as bourgeois bohemians, or Bobos, in his book Bobos in Paradise, a.k.a. Trustifarians.
- Guppie is a gay urban professional.[16]
See also
References
- ^ Algeo, John (1991). Fifty Years Among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms. Cambridge University Press, p. 220. ISBN 0-521-413-77X.
- ^ a b c d Burnett, John; Alan Bush. "Profiling the Yuppies". Journal of Advertising Research 26 (2): 27-35. ISSN 0021-8499.
- ^ "Marketers Watch New Yuppie Strains". Management Review 77 (7): 10. ISSN 0021-8499.
- ^ Kessler, Felix. "Executive Promotion Path: Fast Track for Young Managers". Management Review 57 (3): 25. ISSN 0025-1895.
- ^ Ayto, John (2006). Movers And Shakers: A Chronology of Words That Shaped Our Age. Oxford University Press, p. 128. ISBN 0-198-614-527.
- ^ Dan Rottenberg. "About that urban renaissance.... there'll be a slight delay", Chicago Magazine, May 1980, p. 154ff.
- ^ Budd, Leslie; Whimster, Sam (1992). Global Finance and Urban Living: A Study of Metropolitan Change. Routledge, p. 316. ISBN 0-415-070-97X.
- ^ Moore, Jonathan (1986). Campaign for President: The Managers Look at '84. Praeger/Greenwood, 123. ISBN 0-865-691-320.
- ^ Shapiro, Walter (1991). The Birth and -- Maybe -- Death of Yuppiedom. Retrieved on 2007-04-28.
- ^ Will Lee. "Things that Make You Go Hmmm...", Entertainment Weekly, 28 April 2000. Retrieved on 2007-04-28.
- ^ a b R.Z. Sheppard. "Yuppie Lit: Publicize or Perish", TIME magazine, June 24 2001. Retrieved on 2007-04-28.
- ^ Mary Ellen Mark. "Jay Watch", Elle magazine UK, August 1996. Retrieved on 2007-04-28.
- ^ Tom Brook. "Showdown at the Fight Club", BBC, 5 November 1999. Retrieved on 2007-04-28.
- ^ Patricia Hersch. "thirtysomethingtherapy: the hit TV show may be filled with "yuppie angst," but therapists are using it to help people", Psychology Today, October 1988. Retrieved on 2007-04-28.
- ^ Wall Street Review. Channel 4 (UK).
- ^ a b Ayto 2006, p. 225.
- ^ Algeo 1991, p. 228.
- ^ (2002) The American Heritage Abbreviations Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Reference Books, p. 89. ISBN 0-618-249-524.
- ^ Dale, Rodney; Puttick, Steve. Wordsworth Dictionary of Abbreviations & Acronyms, p. 44. ISBN 1-853-263-850.
- ^ (1991) The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories. Merriam-Webster, p. 141. ISBN 0-877-796-033.
- ^ Packhard, Randall M. (2004). Emerging Illnesses and Society: Negotiating the Public Health Agenda. Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 156. ISBN 0-801-879-426.
External links
- Yuppies entry in the St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culturebe-x-old:Япі
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Translations:
Translations for:
Yuppie
Dansk (Danish)
n. - young urban professional; ung, velhavende forstadsbeboer
adj. - yuppie-agtig
Nederlands (Dutch)
yuppie (jonge carrièrejager), yuppie-achtig
Français (French)
n. - jeune cadre dynamique, yuppie
adj. - de jeune cadre dynamique, de yuppie
Deutsch (German)
n. - (ugs.) Yuppie (junger Professioneller)
adj. - Yuppie...
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - γιάπης, νεαρός επιτυχημένος επαγγελματίας
abbr. - γιάπης
Italiano (Italian)
yuppie, carrierista
Português (Portuguese)
n. - pessoa com boa renda e visão materialista
abbr. - jovem trabalhador que vive na cidade
Español (Spanish)
n. - profesional joven de clase media
adj. - característico de los yuppies
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - yuppie, finansvalp
abbr. - yuppie, finansvalp
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
雅皮士
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 雅痞
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 여피족
adj. - 여피족의
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) ثاب ناجح يعيش على مستوى عال (صفه) ما يخص هذه الطبقه من الشباب
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - צעיר בעל-מקצוע בן המעמד הבינוני העובד בעיר, יאפי, צעיר מצליחן
adj. - אופייני ליאפים, בסגנון היאפים
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Copyrights:
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Marketing Dictionary. Dictionary of Marketing Terms. Copyright © 2000 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Business Dictionary. Dictionary of Business Terms. Copyright © 2000 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Word Origin. America in So Many Words, by David K.Barnhart and Allan A. Metcalf. Copyright © 1997 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Yuppie". Read more |
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| Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. Read more |
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