need your opinion: yupster

Wordsmith.org

= yuppie + hipster

But pity the poor dictionary-maker, in the throes of overchoice

24,300 hits would seem to indicate this one is catching on. But as a word-enthusiast, suppose you were compiling a dictionary of early 21st-century slang. Soon you discover that there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of late blend, portmanteau, infixes, and sniglets

..such as ABSOLUDICROUS, BABELICIOUS, FISHABILITY, WUNCH OF BANKERS, DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION ETC ETC...

The meaning of which is pretty obvious and the longevity of which is questionable, no matter how many hits it may evoke (the last gets 273,000). Including them all would require a tome the size of Random Unabridged

So I need your opinion--take YUPSTER for instance--would you include this one, and on what basis would you decide

this is precisely why lexicographers will tell you that they *still rely chiefly on the Written Record.

edit: to the question posed, yupster is yet another example of the yuppification of our language.

tsu: Well put

Don't think I've heard it or read it before, but I knew what it meant. It uses productive morphological derivational processes to coin a new word.

Aside: it's interesting how -ster has gone from the native Saxon feminine agentive suffix to a masculine one (under Anglo-Norman influence -teur/-teuse fr. Latin -tor), and lately a pejorative one. (cf. job-related English surnames Webster, Brewster, Baxter, Dempster, (but seemstress); and gangster, ?youngster, (perhaps with influence from non-related Latinate pejorative suffix, e.g., poetaster, oleaster.)

None of the acquainted need guess at this opinion. If it looks like it fell out of a pop-culture tabloid, apply the | REJECT | stamp promptly.

Quote:

None of the acquainted need guess at this opinion. If it looks like it fell out of a pop-culture tabloid, apply the | REJECT | stamp promptly.

You're nothing if not consistent, Aramis!

Dale, I don't like the word, but that's not what you're asking, is it. I guess it needs the test of time, but lexicographers disagree on how many years that should be.

Anna does well to divide the question into two.

Is it a word worthy of notice, collection, definition and recordation? Sure. That is a democratic process whereby, if enough folks use it, it is thereby worthy.

Is it a word worthy of use? That is a totally personal question, akin to a debate about dark chocolate versus milk chocolate, scotch versus bourbon, margerine versus butter.

While my conclusion is that I would never use the word "yupster", that conclusion is worth no more than my preference of fresh squeezed lemon juice over the bottled stuff or of 100% cotton shirts over the ones with synthetic fibre.

they still rely chiefly on the Written Record - The trouble is, electronic storage space has become incredibly cheap, whether they like it or not. And it cries out to be filled

> The trouble is, electronic storage space has become incredibly cheap, whether they like it or not. And it cries out to be filled

Very true, Werner - my colleague has just been provided with a new puter with a 320 gig drive and he can hardly type... so I have taken out the option of getting my buddy in ICT to set me up with a 'secret' shared nominal drive so I can use it to store loads of my memory-hungry graphics work. I just hope Dave's network profile won't take too long to load...

mav: May I take this opportunity to remark, very clever indeed, and to bubble up my original question, which is of great importance to many (read that, "one" (1))

ws: Verily I concur enthusiastically

A yupster has an identity crisis... probably even more-so than a dilettante... possibly just less than a double agent.