leisure class

Cultural  

1. The rich, so called because they can afford not to work. The term was made current by the economist Thorstein Veblen in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class.

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Example Sentences

Vincent’s day job as a senior reporter for the Verge plants him firmly in the present, and he brings the reader up to the current craze of the leisure class: the “quantified self” movement.

From Washington Post • Nov. 30, 2022

Pacifico’s follow-up, “Class,” took on the hipster millennials of Italy’s leisure class, their bank accounts padded by regular cash transfers from their parents, their self-regard padded by the status symbols those transfers afford.

From New York Times • Dec. 7, 2021

Gillespie said the rule is "kind of a holdover from the leisure class."

From Fox News • Sep. 6, 2021

Veblen observed a world in which that leisure class, looking down its collective nose at the laboring masses, was all around him, but he saw evidence of something else as well.

From Salon • Apr. 19, 2019

A jungle yields no abundance to feed the multitudes, and supports no leisure class.

From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver

Related Words

• affluent
• upscale
• wealthy
• well-heeled
• well-off
• well-to-do