# Earlier slang word for yuppie-type person? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 13, 2005, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earlier-slang-word-for-yuppie-type-person/289824 "2005-02-13T03:11:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earlier-slang-word-for-yuppie-type-person/289824/41 "2005-02-13T20:23:31Z")
> [@Wendell Wagner](#): > > Once again, pukykamell, are you reading my posts? Of course I know that there has been no serious contention to the claim that Bob Greene coined the word. That’s why I said “If you really know about its use at that point, you have made a major etymological discovery.” Yes, I know all about the claim that Bob Greene coined the term back in 1982. I’ve known that for twenty years. I was trying, as gently as possible, to get Ringo to talk further about his claim that he used or at least heard used the term in the 1970’s. I’m trying to get him to show us his evidence that he remembers the term being used back then. Christ, Wendell, no reason to get as hissy about it. I should have made it clearer that I wasn’t challenging your authority about it. Hence my follow-up post which starts “I know you know about this more than I do.” I was just curious if any actually asked Greene about it. Which you have not, in fact, answered. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earlier-slang-word-for-yuppie-type-person/289824/42 "2005-02-13T20:24:35Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > Fred Shapiro, a rather extraordinary scholar of word origins, says about “yuppie” From [http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0306C&L=ads-l&P=R9547](http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0306C&L=ads-l&P=R9547) > > So, it looks like it was very much in use by multiple people in 1982, including Greene, and no doubt was used in speech before that date. Ah, well, there we go. That’s what I was looking for. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earlier-slang-word-for-yuppie-type-person/289824/43 "2005-02-13T23:36:31Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I’ve always thought that the word _yippie_, member of the Youth International Party, dating from 1968, prompted the use of _yuppie_, Accoring to Paul Krassner, the inventor of the Yippie tag, he came up the Youth Internationist Party (YIP) via Yippie, reverse-engineered (or do I want to use the Procrustean bed meatphor here…?) because he wanted something that rhymed with hippie and and sounded like a fun noise (“_Yippie!_”). He claims to have launched this at a New Year’s Eve Party Dec 31, 1967, although the first press releases didn’t go out for another couple of months. It’s in his autobiography _Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut_ on pp 156-157. Later in the book he describes moderating debates between the transformed Jerry Rubin and the unreconstructed Abbie Hoffman in a series of “The Yuppies vs. the Yippies” programs in 1984. If yuppie is based in any way on yippie, then its etymology might be traced via hippie to forms of “hip” and “hep” back through hipster and African-American slang all the way to the Wolof language of West Africa. There seems to be some debate among linguists about that relation. > [@](#): > > Clarence Major, in his study “Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang”, traces the origins of hip to the Wolof verb hepi (“to see”) or hipi (“to open one’s eyes”), and dates its usage in America to the 1700s. So from the linguistic start, hip is a term of enlightenment, cultivated by slaves from the West African nations of Senegal and coastal Gambia. The slaves also brought the Wolof dega (“to understand”), source of the colloquial dig, and jev (“to disparage or talk falsely”), the root of jive. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earlier-slang-word-for-yuppie-type-person/289824/44 "2005-02-14T00:04:10Z")
> [@Crandolph](#): > > Accoring to Paul Krassner, the inventor of the Yippie tag, he came up the Youth Internationist Party (YIP) via Yippie, reverse-engineered (or do I want to use the Procrustean bed meatphor here…?) because he wanted something that rhymed with hippie and and sounded like a fun noise (“_Yippie!_”). He claims to have launched this at a New Year’s Eve Party Dec 31, 1967, although the first press releases didn’t go out for another couple of months. It’s in his autobiography _Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut_ on pp 156-157. Krassner probably forgot that he wrote an article for _The Realist_ in August of 1967, where he said > [@](#): > > Coincidental with the Democrats’ Convention there’s going to be a Youth International Party–YIP–and Chicago will be invaded by a mass of _yippies_. > You’ve just witnessed the birth of a word. Bad drugs? > [@Crandolph](#): > > If yuppie is based in any way on yippie, then its etymology might be traced via hippie to forms of “hip” and “hep” back through hipster and African-American slang all the way to the Wolof language of West Africa. There seems to be some debate among linguists about that relation. Among linguists that know their stuff, there is no debate. There is absolutely **NO** credible evidence of these(and many other “black” words) coming from Wolof. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earlier-slang-word-for-yuppie-type-person/289824/45 "2005-02-14T05:13:35Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > Krassner probably forgot that he wrote an article for _The Realist_ in August of 1967, where he said… Bad drugs? How embarrassing to get verifiable info wrong in your own autbiography! Drugs may well have played a part. This sent me back to the 20 or more pages preceding my cite above, and he gives no indication in the book that he was using the name before that date. It makes me question the chronology and to an extent the veracity of everything else in there… ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earlier-slang-word-for-yuppie-type-person/289824/46 "2005-02-14T05:40:38Z")
I don’t have a cite, but Graham Chapman was apparently inspired to write the “Upper-Class Twit of the Year” sketch after being woken up many times by such twits slamming their car doors near his flat upon exiting bars stocked with pretentious wines. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earlier-slang-word-for-yuppie-type-person/289824/47 "2005-02-14T06:29:25Z")
Abbie Hoffman said he was at that New Year’s Eve party where the name “Yippie” was coined, and he attributed the coinage to Ed Sanders of the Fugs. Sanders and the rest had been toking up while discussing innovative ideas on how to protest in the upcoming year. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earlier-slang-word-for-yuppie-type-person/289824/48 "2005-02-14T08:52:58Z")
> [@Nanoda](#): > > I don’t have a cite, but Graham Chapman was apparently inspired to write the “Upper-Class Twit of the Year” sketch after being woken up many times by such twits slamming their car doors near his flat upon exiting bars stocked with pretentious wines. Sorry for the hijack/correction: Chapman and John Cleese were writing partners in Monty Python, and according to [this bio](http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/python/Bio/spot-gc.html) of Chapman, he credits Cleese as the one woken up by twits: > [@](#): > > Show 12 brought Chapman and Cleese’s commentary on upper class “Yuppies”. “The Upper Class Twit of the Year”: “Cleese had noted a bar called ‘The Loose Box’ where the twits usually went; at night they disturbed Cleese by banging car doors and making braying noises. We took revenge on them with the sketch.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/earlier-slang-word-for-yuppie-type-person/289824.md?page=2)