March 6, 1998

yuppie

What does the acronym "yuppie" stand for?

The word yuppie stands for "young urban professional," with the -ie suffix being one that forms personal or pejorative nouns from other parts of speech. It refers to young, ambitious city-dwellers with professional careers and affluent lifestyles.

Some early sources suggest that yuppie stands for "young upwardly-mobile professional," but this was usually expanded into yumpie. In 1984, when yuppie first came to media attention, it, yumpie, and YAP (for "young affluent professional") were all in circulation, but yuppie is the one that prevailed.

Yuppie drew at least part of its inspiration from several earlier words, notably the late-1960s Yippie 'a member of a group of radical, politically active hippies', formed from Youth International Party, on the model of hippie; and preppie, which was earlier but had a peak of popularity in the early 1980s with the publication of The Official Preppy Handbook, which greatly helped the rise of these -ie terms as indicators of social level. Yuppie itself inspired a large number of spinoff terms, most of which were quickly forgotton; an exception is the still-current buppie "black urban professional."

The word yuppie is a word of 1984, when it was the vogue word, the subject of cover articles in major magazines and the inspiration for several books. The first example anyone has found in print is from 1982, although some claim that it was in use in the late 1970s.

Note that all the -ie words discussed in this article can be spelled with a -y instead; the -ie ending is more common, and I have used it as a convention.