Babbittry

American  

[bab-i-tree] / ˈbæb ɪ tri /

Or Babbitry

noun

(often lowercase)

1. the attitude and behavior of a Babbitt.

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Etymology

Origin of Babbittry

First recorded in 1925–30; Babbitt + -ry

Example Sentences

The neologism “Babbittry,” meaning banal materialism, came from the title of a 1922 novel by Minnesotan Sinclair Lewis: “His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.”

From Washington Post

Lauck assigns most of the blame for this attitude to scholarly nabobs like Carl Van Doren, who led a “revolt from the village” sentiment that characterized the region as suffused with retrograde Babbittry.

From Washington Post

These stories are all satirical, making fun of Babbittry, small-town hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness, but the humor is mostly as fond as it is pointed, and the characters are never caricatures.

From The New Yorker

Perhaps it's the general ambience that surrounds Carnegie today, evoking images of Babbittry, good-natured guffaws and glad-handing, the perpetual American boosterism, that provokes these reactions.

From Inc

Although the City Too Busy to Hate is a motto associated with the beginning of Atlanta's desegregation, the sentiment it expressed -- what I always thought of as Babbittry over Bigotry -- has been a dominating sentiment at least since 1886, when Henry Grady, one of the founding fathers of Atlanta boosterism, expressed his dreams for a New South.

From Time Magazine Archive