# WTF is a W.A.S.P.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 29, 2002, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442 "2002-12-29T01:26:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@BioHazard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BioHazard)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2002, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/1 "2002-12-29T01:26:03Z")
I’m sorry if it is something racist but WTF is a W.A.S.P.
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### Author:  [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2002, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/2 "2002-12-29T01:27:52Z")
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
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### Author:  [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2002, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/3 "2002-12-29T01:27:53Z")
Couple of seconds with Merriam-Webster ([www.m-w.com](http://www.m-w.com)):
> [@](#):
>
> Main Entry: WASP
> Variant(s): or Wasp /'wäsp, 'wosp/
> Function: noun
> Usage: often attributive
> Etymology: white Anglo-Saxon Protestant
> Date: 1957
> sometimes disparaging : an American of Northern European and especially British ancestry and of Protestant background; especially : a member of the dominant and the most privileged class of people in the U.S.
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### Author:  [@mongrel\_8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mongrel_8)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2002, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/4 "2002-12-29T16:19:11Z")
WASP was also the Women Airforce Service Pilots during WWII. NPR did an interesting story on them last week I believe.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2002, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/5 "2002-12-29T16:28:18Z")
The acronym was invented by E. Digby Baltzell, in his magnificent book [The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0300038186/qid=1041179483/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-7666568-3360631?v=glance&s=books), one of the seminal works on sociology and class. Highly recommended.
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### Author:  [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2002, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/6 "2002-12-29T16:33:41Z")
W.A.S.P. is also a crummy band led by Blackie Lawless.
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2002, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/7 "2002-12-29T18:38:42Z")
> [@](#):
>
> White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. An acronym explicated and given currency by E. Digby Baltzell in his The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America (Yale U. P., 1964). E. B. Palmore defined and used it in a 1962 journal article.
Baltzell always get the credit, though.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2002, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/8 "2002-12-29T19:15:30Z")
Hmm. Not only does Baltzell get the credit, but I’ve read later pieces by him explaining how and why he invented W.A.S.P. Google turns up numerous cites that say he coined the term - and explicated on his doing so in a Philadelphia magazine interview I can’t find on the Net - along with a few hits that say he popularized the term.
But a Google search on E. B. Palmore WASP turns up exactly one hit, which matches the one you give, **samclem**.
So it’s over to the OED online, which indeed confirms Palmore’s invention and lists other pre-Baltzell usages:
> [@](#):
>
> 1962 E. B. PALMORE in Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. LXVII. 442/2 For the sake of brevity we will use the nickname ‘Wasp’ for this group, from the initial letters of ‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestants’. 1963 Times 2 May 15/5 There is such a thing as a ‘Human Engineering Laboratory’; whether a man is a Wasp (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) can decide his career. 1963 New Statesman 10 May 716/2 This year’s executive model will be over six feet tall, clean-shaven, lean, and with large fleshy ears… He should try to be or pretend to be a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and ought to have gone to an Ivy League college, preferably Princeton.
This is odd and disappointing, in the way that the accusations that Stephen Ambrose didn’t properly cite his sources are. The books of both authors stand on their own for excellence, but I now have to wonder about the personalities. It’s hard to believe that Baltzell wouldn’t have noticed an article in a place as prominent as the American Journal of Sociology.
But it is possible, at least. A book I’m reading, _Predicting New Words_, by Allan Metcalf, gives numerous citations for presumably independent coinages of now familiar words and phrases. Baltzell could easily have come up with it on his own. Why he would then continue to take credit decades after the fact is a mystery, though.
But then what are we to make of Merriam-Webster’s 1957 date?
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### Author:  [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2002, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/9 "2002-12-29T19:26:50Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I’m sorry if it is something racist but WTF is a W.A.S.P.
It can be sort of racist when it implies unspoken, ‘country club’-type exclusiveness, i.e. no blacks, jews, catholics etc.
It can also be more light-hearted, akin to J.A.P. (jewish American princess).
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/10 "2002-12-30T00:08:36Z")
Why did the bee put on a yarmulke?
It didn’t want to be mistaken for a WASP.
How can you tell the WASPs at a Chinese restaurant?
They’re the ones _not_ sharing the food.
What do WASPs make for dinner?
Reservations.
(Actually, when I read the title of this thread I thought it was going to be about the pilots.)
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### Author:  [@Uncommon\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uncommon_Sense)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/11 "2002-12-30T01:19:55Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Snooooopy \*
> \*\*W.A.S.P. is also a crummy band led by Blackie Lawless. \*\*
What was the meaning? We Are Sexual Perverts? as I recall.
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/12 "2002-12-30T02:51:53Z")
**Exapno**. I posted the question about the 1957 cite to the American Dialect Society Mailing LIst, and just got a reply from Fred Shapiro, the Yale scholar and superhuman searcher of databases:
[QUOTE]
This is probably the 1957 citation I discovered and reported in an article in American Speech some years ago.
[1957 Andrew M. Hacker in _Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev._ LI. 1011
They are “WASPs” – in the cocktail party jargon of the sociologists.
That is, they are white, they are Anglo-Saxon in origin, and they are
Protestant.
/QUOTE]
So, the term almost certainly would/should have been known to both of the usual suspects.
I wonder if Baltzell ever actually claimed that he invented it, or did he rather allow people to assume that he did? That still wouldn’t be a nice thing to do, but it might be more human and understandable.
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### Author:  [@Moirai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moirai)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/13 "2002-12-30T05:02:15Z")
Heard in high school-
“Your mom is so WASP she gets out of the shower to pee.”
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### Author:  [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/14 "2002-12-30T06:43:24Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by whuckfistle \*
> \*\*What was the meaning? We Are Sexual Perverts? as I recall. \*\*
I believe it was We Are Satan’s People. Horrible band if memory serves me right. The pinnacle of 80’s crap metal.
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### Author:  [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/15 "2002-12-30T15:42:16Z")
**samclem**. Andrew Hacker? The same one as the author of _Two Nations_ and other books on American social structures?
I gotta assume that he was just a pup back in 1957 and not yet a famous name, but the Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. is hardly an obscure source. How is this going unnoticed by the OED? Or E. B. Palmore? Or E. Digby Baltzell?
This is a nice catch of Shapiro’s but it doesn’t explain when the term actually entered into wider usage, at least within the academic community.
Or why all the obituary writers credited Baltzell, including a Dean in a UPenn publication.
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### Author:  [@BioHazard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BioHazard)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/16 "2002-12-30T17:22:58Z")
Thanks guys, now I can re-read my hustlers and actually get the jokes…
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### Author:  [@Max\_Carnage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Carnage)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/17 "2002-12-30T18:57:17Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by BioHazard \*
> \*\*Thanks guys, now I can re-read my hustlers and actually get the jokes… \*\*
Re-_what_ your Hustlers?
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### Author:  [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/18 "2002-12-30T19:07:50Z")
… there are jokes?
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### Author:  [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/19 "2002-12-30T22:15:30Z")
There are words?
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### Author:  [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2002, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-is-a-w-a-s-p/145442/20 "2002-12-30T23:58:20Z")
While we’re at it, there are a lot fewer WASPS in Canada than previously believed… since the better part of British-Canadians are of Celtic origin!
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