yuppie

American  

[yuhp-ee] / ˈjʌp i /

Or yuppy

noun

• yuppies
  plural

1. (often initial capital letter) a young, ambitious, and well-educated city-dweller who has a professional career and an affluent lifestyle.

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yuppie British  

/ ˈjʌpɪ /

noun

1. an affluent young professional person

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adjective

1. typical of or reflecting the values characteristic of yuppies

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• yuppiedom
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• yuppies
  plural

Etymology

Origin of yuppie

First recorded in 1980–85, y(oung) u(rban) p(rofessional) + -ie

Explanation

If your brother calls you a yuppie, it's not a compliment, but it does mean that he sees you as a well-paid, professional adult. In the mid-1980's, people started using the derogatory term yuppie to talk about a particular group of middle-class, well-educated workers. Yuppies are distinguished by their disposable income and the things on which they choose to spend it, like clothes, food, and cars. Yuppie is a shortened form of "young urban professional," and its popularity won out over other acronyms of the time, "yumpie," for "young upwardly mobile professional, and "yap," for "young aspiring professional."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

yuppie yuppies

When she begins dating the owner of a local pet shop, Iona immediately falls in step with her yuppie new beau.

From Salon ● Feb. 28, 2026

Mr. Pita, fluent in English and backed by strong support from younger Thais, appears in public as a jovial yuppie brimming with bright ideas, confident that he can overcome the constitutional hurdles in his path.

From Washington Times ● Jul. 11, 2023

And I don’t know why it was viewed as a yuppie vaccine or why Lyme disease would be viewed as a yuppie disease.

From Slate ● Sep. 8, 2022

So from that Sonny Bono beach bum guy, he becomes the icon for being a yuppie.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2022

The only repeat pickups I get are old guys who always know a better way or yuppie businessmen who are always checking their watch or talking on the phone.

From "I Am the Messenger" by Markus Zusak

“The yuppies might like it, but we’re all set on bike lanes,” Mr. Napolitano said.

From New York Times ● May 21, 2023

By the mid 1990s, it was a phenomenon — what one writer for The New York Times called “a high octane snack for yuppies and fitness freaks.”

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 8, 2023

DiDi, serving as Greek chorus and comic relief, pulls Ms. Noomin directly into the story, saying: “Are you gonna let some cartoon yuppies cry cartoon tears over your lost babies?”

From Washington Post ● Sep. 17, 2022

Much as yuppies endlessly relived the 1960s throughout the 1980s and 1990s, millennials and younger Gen X are looking back at their youth and wondering: Why did we ever put up with this?

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 19, 2022

Or would he, as I suspected, deprive the yuppies of another crack at him and drift in some other direction?

From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz