On OkCupid! there is a personality trait called “radcliffy”. I went to the glossary to look up its meaning, and it mentions that the website’s founders are from Harvard. They didn’t give a clear definition, but mentioned that is a group of traits that describes a certain type of girl that goes to Harvard. Since I never been to Harvard I have no idea what they are talking about. Does anyone knows what this means?
Probably someone who’s more serious and focused on academics or business success than the stereotypical sorority girl from Party U. Politically left-leaning as well.
What sort of traits they’re talking about, I have no idea. But presumably this is where the term comes from.
Incidentally, did it mention who the site’s founders were?
The term is exclusive to OKCupid! It’s not clear what it means. Some people think that it doesn’t have any definite meaning:
This is sort of a WAG but wasn’t there something in Good Will Hunting or another ‘Boston’ movie that talks about the Radcliffe girls being more promiscuous than the Hahvahd girls?
No, that doesn’t make any sense. Radcliffe was just the name of the undergraduate women’s college of Harvard University. Radcliffe used to be a separate women’s undergraduate college back while Harvard College was a men’s undergraduate college. (Harvard University was always the name for the entire university system, with both undergraduate colleges and the co-ed graduate and professional schools.) For the most part, even then the undergraduate men and women attended the same classes even though they were theoretically in different colleges. When the colleges were merged in the 1960’s, the distinction between Radcliffe College and Harvard College was lost. Now there’s just Harvard College with both male and female undergraduate students.
After the full integration of the two schools in '60s or early '70s, female graduates received diplomas from Radcliffe and Harvard, while males received just the one from Harvard (although all the classes, dormitories and other facilities were fully shared). I don’t recall exactly when, but a few years ago even this distinction ended and now everyone is just Harvard.
And the ones with the promiscuous reputation were the Wellesley students.
an acquaintance of mine who went to Smith (and brings it up all the freakin time) used the word “cliffy” of a woman who went to Harvard. She had to explain to me that it meant “radcliffy” and I seem to remember her explanation was something close to “snobby” in a “my school is better than your school” kind of way (which was rich coming from Smithy girl)
about 25 years ago my sister attended a summer program for high school students at Harvard. We went to visit her midway through. She stayed in what I can only hope was normally a men’s dorm.
There was horrible horrible graphic and degrading grafitti in the bathrooms, most of it about “cliffies”.
I don’t have a definition for “radcliffy” but based on that experience my guess is that is isn’t nice.
I could swear there is a movie ref about 'Radcliffe girls" somewhere but damn if I can find it. But as others have mentioned I don’t think it is meant as a nice sentiment.