preppy

Preppy is a term in the American popular vocabulary, traditionally used to describe the characteristics of patrician, White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants (usually with some personal or familial connection to New England; e.g. WASP) who attend or attended major private, secondary preparatory schools. These characteristics include particular subcultural speech, vocabulary, accent, dress, mannerisms, etiquette, and general way of being. Lisa Birnbach's 1980 Official Preppy Handbook is a good, albeit tongue-in-cheek, "guide" to the preppy subculture. Paul Fussell's book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System discusses the sociological implications of the preppy subculture. In recent years, the term has come to describe those who affect some popular, bourgeois physical manifestation of the preppy subculture. In many cases, this usage pertains merely to a person's dress, and not their geographical location, upbringing, or other traditionally "preppy" characteristic. In such cases, those described as "preppy" are not, in fact, preppies. The term is similar in formation to hippie or yuppie, and had great currency in the 1970s and 1980s. Retailers often favored by "preppies" include:

Preppy

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