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Preppy is a term in the popular vocabulary,
traditionally used to describe the characteristics of
White,
patrician,
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 Status: A Guide to the American Class 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. |
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Search the internet for
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Clothing definitions and
Glossaries. |
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