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yuppie

 
Dictionary: yup·pie   (yŭp'ē) pronunciation
 
n. Informal.

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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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.

 

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
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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
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Yuppie (short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional")[1] refers to a 1980s and early 1990s term for financially secure, upper-middle class young people in their 20s and early 30s. [2]

Contents

History

Although the term yuppies had not appeared until the early 1980s, there was discussion about young urban professionals as early as 1968.(according to becancan).

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 20s and 30s 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."[3]

Joseph Epstein is incorrectly credited for coining the term in 1982.[4] An early printed appearance of the word is in a May 1980 Chicago magazine article by Dan Rottenberg.[5] The term gained currency in United States in 1983 when syndicated newspaper columnist Bob Greene published a story about a business networking group founded in 1982 by the former radical leader Jerry Rubin, formerly of the Youth International Party (whose members were called yippies); Greene said he had heard people at the networking group (which met at Studio 54 to soft classical music) joke that Rubin had "gone from being a yippie to being a yuppie". The headline of Greene's story was From Yippie to Yuppie.[6][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. On April 8, 1991, TIME proclaimed the death of the yuppie in a mock obituary.[9]

Notable cultural depictions of yuppies

Related terms

See also

References

  1. ^ Algeo, John (1991). Fifty Years Among the New Words: A Dictionary of Neologisms. Cambridge University Press. pp. 220. ISBN 0-521-413-77X. 
  2. ^ a b c d Burnett, John; Alan Bush. "Profiling the Yuppies". Journal of Advertising Research 26 (2): 27–35. ISSN 0021-8499. 
  3. ^ Kessler, Felix. "Executive Promotion Path: Fast Track for Young Managers". Management Review 57 (3): 25. ISSN 0025-1895. 
  4. ^ Ayto, John (2006). Movers And Shakers: A Chronology of Words That Shaped Our Age. Oxford University Press. pp. 128. ISBN 0-198-614-527. 
  5. ^ Dan Rottenberg (May 1980). "About that urban renaissance.... there'll be a slight delay". Chicago Magazine. p. 154ff. 
  6. ^ Budd, Leslie; Whimster, Sam (1992). Global Finance and Urban Living: A Study of Metropolitan Change. Routledge. pp. 316. ISBN 0-415-070-97X. 
  7. ^ Hadden-Guest, Anthony The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco, and the Culture of the Night New York:1997--William Morrow Page 116
  8. ^ Moore, Jonathan (1986). Campaign for President: The Managers Look at '84. Praeger/Greenwood. pp. 123. ISBN 0-865-691-320. 
  9. ^ Shapiro, Walter (1991). "The Birth and -- Maybe -- Death of Yuppiedom". http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972695-1,00.html. Retrieved on 2007-04-28. 
  10. ^ Will Lee (28 April 2000). "Things that Make You Go Hmmm...". Entertainment Weekly. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,276085,00.html. Retrieved on 2007-04-28. 
  11. ^ a b R.Z. Sheppard (June 24, 2001). "Yuppie Lit: Publicize or Perish". TIME magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,145267,00.html. Retrieved on 2007-04-28. 
  12. ^ Mary Ellen Mark (August 1996). "Jay Watch". Elle magazine UK. http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/elle%20uk/909O-000-007.html. Retrieved on 2007-04-28. 
  13. ^ Tom Brook (5 November 1999). "Showdown at the Fight Club". BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/03/99/tom_brook/506620.stml. Retrieved on 2007-04-28. 
  14. ^ Girl with Curious Hair at Amazon.com
  15. ^ American Psycho: a double portrait of serial yuppie Patrick Bateman
  16. ^ Amazon.com: American Psycho
  17. ^ Arizona Daily Wildcat: 'American Psycho' ties yuppie greed to serial killing
  18. ^ George Mason University: Into the Wilds of an American Psycho's Identity: Parallels between Into the Wild & American Psycho
  19. ^ Filmmaker Magazine: "Die Yuppie Scum!"
  20. ^ Goddard College Pitkin Review: "The Pen is Mightier: Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho"
  21. ^ Entertainment Weekly: Book News: "American Psychodrama"
  22. ^ Patricia Hersch (October 1988). "thirtysomethingtherapy: the hit TV show may be filled with "yuppie angst," but therapists are using it to help people". Psychology Today. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1175/is_n10_v22/ai_6652864. Retrieved on 2007-04-28. 
  23. ^ Rodriguez, Gregory (2008-02-25). "White like us". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rodriguez25feb25,0,1952462.column. Retrieved on 2008-03-20. 
  24. ^ "Wall Street Review". Channel 4 (UK). http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=109998. 
  25. ^ "imdb “Yuppy Love” episode profile". imdb (UK). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0666595/trivia. 
  26. ^ a b Ayto 2006, p. 225.
  27. ^ The American Heritage Abbreviations Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Reference Books. 2002. p. 89. ISBN 0-618-249-524. 
  28. ^ Dale, Rodney; Puttick, Steve. Wordsworth Dictionary of Abbreviations & Acronyms. pp. 44. ISBN 1-853-263-850. 
  29. ^ Merriam-Webster (1991). The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories. p. 141. ISBN 0-877-796-033. 
  30. ^ Tom VanRiper. “Going Green Cuts Profits”. The New York Daily News, 2005-4-22. Retrieved on 2008-11-11
  31. ^ http://www.scuppie.com
  32. ^ Algeo 1991, p. 228.
  33. ^ Packhard, Randall M. (2004). Emerging Illnesses and Society: Negotiating the Public Health Agenda. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 156. ISBN 0-801-879-426. 

External links

  • Yuppies entry in the St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture

 
Translations: Yuppie
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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

Русский (Russian)
яппи

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

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ヤッピー

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


 
 

 

Copyrights:

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
Marketing Dictionary. Dictionary of Marketing Terms. Copyright © 2000 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Business Dictionary. Dictionary of Business Terms. Copyright © 2000 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Yuppie" Read more
Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more

 

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