Yuppie

"Yuppie", short for "Young Urban Professional," describes a demographic of people comprising baby boomers as well as people in their late twenties and early thirties. Yuppies tend to hold jobs in the professional sector, with incomes that place them in the upper-middle economic class. The term "Yuppie" emerged in the early 1980s as an ironic echo of the earlier "hippies" and "yippies" who had rejected the materialistically oriented values of the business community. Although the original yuppies were "young," the term now applies as well to people of middle age.

Related terms

A yumpie is a "young upwardly-mobile person". While this term is far less common, many confuse the derivation for Yuppie with that of Yumpie, and the two express broadly the same connotations anyway. Some sources (textbooks, even) state that yuppie actually stands for "young upwardly-mobile person".

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A buppie is sometimes used to refer to a black (African-American) yuppie.

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A guppie is a gay yuppie.

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Yuppify and yuppification are a slang terms used in place of the words gentrify and gentrification but with an even more negative connotation.

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A yuppie slum refers to any neighborhood that is largely populated by a young well-off crowd, but often has other connotations of gentrification and rising rental and dining costs in a previously low-rent neighborhood.

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A yuppie food stamp is a crisp US$20 note issued by an ATM machine.

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"Dinks" are well-off couples who often have much in common with "yuppies". The label is an acronym--Dual Income, No Kids.

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"Sitcoms" are former yuppies or DINKs. The label is an acronym for Single Income Two Children Oppressive Mortgage.

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"Yuppicide" is the killing of Yuppies. (Vehicular Yuppicide is when you slam into a BMW.) A New York-based hardcore/punk band in the 1990s called themselves Yuppicide.

Related Topics:
Cide - BMW - New York - Hardcore - Punk - 1990s - Yuppicide

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• Compare Hippie, Yippie, and Hipster

See also

• Yuppie Flu