Earlier slang word for yuppie-type person?

All of these words have slightly different meanings. “Yuppie,” as it was originally used, was more about the lifestyle of the person rather than their job or income level. To be able to sustain that lifestyle, it took a fair amount of income and thus necessitated certain sorts of jobs (or, more rarely, a certain amount of inherited wealth), but the term was about the lifestyle and not the money or the career. It was about being able to go to the new, hip restaurants, owning the new, hip furniture and electronic equipment, going to the new, hip entertainments, etc. Usually, one was supposed to live in a gentrified section of a big city and not in a suburb, however well-off. This was a rather delicately balanced thing. If you tried too much for hipness, you weren’t really a yuppie but a bohemian. If you didn’t try hard enough for hipness, you were just a suburban white-collar type. This term later got used in vaguer and vaguer ways.

“Preppie” referred to the background that a person grew up in. To go to the proper private high schools (and later the proper colleges), you probably had to be born in the right family, although it was possible but difficult for a nouveau riche parent to buy their children into preppieness. Of course, this tended to correlate with income and thus with one’s job, but it was more about style and being born into that style.

“White-collar” was about the sort of job one had. Again, this tended to correlate with income, but not consistently. Some blue-collar jobs paid better than white-collar ones.

“Organization men” and “gray-flannel-suit men” had to have the right sorts of jobs, but they also had to have the right attitude. They had to buy into the devotion to the company. They nearly always lived in the suburbs.

Ringo, could you tell us more about the use of the term “yuppie” from the late 1970’s? If you really know about its use at that point, you have made a major etymological discovery. Where did you live when you used it? What sort of socioeconomic circumstances and lifestyle did you have at that time, and what sort of socioeconomic circumstances and lifestyles did the people described by the term have? With whom did you use the term - friends, relatives, co-workers, etc.? Did you see it used on the TV or in print? Tell us anything else you remember about the sort of people who used the term and the sort of people the term applied to.

VernWinterbottom writes:

> They just couldn’t stomach those sissified beers advertised by yuppie boys
> standing in mountain streams.

Is this sentence supposed to be uttered (or thought, anyway) by somebody in 1963? Do you have any evidence that in 1963 any sorts of beer were advertised using yuppie types standing in mountain streams? It seems to me that in 1963 there were no advertisements of that type. Furthermore, it seems to me that there were no boutique beers of that type. I think your problem here is that you don’t have the attitude right for that time, let alone the vocabulary.

IIRC, wasn’t the term coined by Bob Greene, Chicago Tribune columnist, back in the 80s?

Rob and Laura Petrie personified the standard couple living in the suburbs (New Rochelle, as I recall) – with the man going into the big city to work (typically a white collar job) and the wife staying home with the kids. So the term would be “young suburbanites”.

pulykamell writes:

> IIRC, wasn’t the term coined by Bob Greene, Chicago Tribune columnist, back in
> the 80s?

Yes, of course I know that that is the usual theory. That’s why I was questioning Ringo so carefully. You’ll notice that I said “If you really know about its use at that point, you have made a major etymological discovery.” The reason that I said that was that I know about the usual theory that Bob Greene coined the term in 1982. I was trying to get Ringo to tell us everything he knows about the use of the word in the late 1970’s so we can evaluate whether he correctly remembers using the word at the time or if he is mistaken.

The thing is, of course, that that was the first time it was used in print. Usually, when a word is used in print it’s been around for at least a little while. However, I haven’t heard any serious contention to the story that Bob coined the word.

You know all about this better than I do. Has anyone ever actually asked Bob Greene where he got the word from?

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.

Wendell

Narragansett Beer, longtime sponsor of Red Sox baseball broadcasts, was bought out by Falstaff or Pabst and the Cranston brewery was demolished around 1981. It would have been about this time the characters stopped drinking beer.

I mentioned their wedding date only as a general reference to their age. They grew up in the fifties, and they still hold on to fifties and early sixties expressions.
Although the word yuppy or preppy might have been in use in the early eighties, I don’t think it’s a term that those particular characters would have used at that point. Just as my mother today doesn’t use the same expressions that my daughter does.

It has to be transcribed at some point in the chain, even if it’s by the dictionary editors. Life’s a lot easier that way. But as long as it’s available for posterity in some form, it’s a solid cite.

I also find it hard to imagine yuppie types fly fishing in 1960s’ ads. I did a quick google on 1960s beer ads and found several that were distinctly upscale, especially this one.

Even that ad is for Budweiser. Were there “sissified” beers back then? If so, were they being nationally advertised? In what medium? Can you try Googling for a name to try to find their ads to see how they were being advertised?

Simulpost.

Exactly what year is this set in? If it’s 1984 or later they probably would have used preppie, because everybody in America was using the word: it wasn’t something that would only be used by the young. Earlier than 1984, they wouldn’t. But if they’ve been married over 30 years, that puts them in the mid-1990s, and by then preppie would have that slightly outdated tone you’re looking for.

VernWinterbottom, in what year is Bud supposed to be thinking the thoughts in the paragraph that you mention?

The actual story I’m writing is set in the present. Bud’s trying to figure out what to buy Mae for their forty-second anniversary. The paragraph I wrote is about how it has become more diffucult to do since Bud always used to buy Narragansett, etc.

(I’m going to take out the reference to the thirtieth anniversary gift because that does confuse the continuity.)

Although it’s written in the third person, I’m trying to evoke the characters’ thoughts in the language they would have used.

In the '80s.

Back in the 1960’s Hamm’s Beerused such a campaign. From the land of sky blue waters…etc.

VernWinterbottom writes:

> The actual story I’m writing is set in the present. Bud’s trying to figure out what
> to buy Mae for their forty-second anniversary. The paragraph I wrote is about
> how it has become more diffucult to do since Bud always used to buy
> Narragansett, etc.
>
> (I’m going to take out the reference to the thirtieth anniversary gift because
> that does confuse the continuity.)
>
> Although it’s written in the third person, I’m trying to evoke the characters’
> thoughts in the language they would have used.
>
> In the '80s.

I’m confused. In what year is Bud thinking the thought about the “yuppie boys standing in mountain streams”? In 1983 or in 2005?

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

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.

“Then, everybody’s favorite brewery in Cranston, Rhode Island, shut down and Bud and Mae stopped drinking beer. They just couldn’t stomach those sissified beers advertised by yuppie boys standing in mountain streams.”

The thought about the sissified beers was in the early '80s. I’m writing about the though in a story set today. The word yuppy is in use today. The word yuppy was in use then, too. I don’t want to use the word yuppy, because I don’t think that it’s a word Bud would have used then. He might not even use it now. If he does use it now, it’s probably screwed up, “You know, them yuppity folks in their Bermuda shorts from L.L. Bean. . .”

So, I’m looking for a somewhat old-fashioned word that somebody who grew up in the '50s would use in the 1980s to describe a yuppy.

Thanks.

I’m writing about the thought :smack:

The Official Preppy Handbook was a bestseller in 1980-1981. Jennifer nicknamed Oliver “Preppie” in the bestselling Erich Segal novel Love Story (1970).

How about ‘One of those snotty country-club types’?