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preppy

preppy

6 7.7
A young person who dresses neatly in traditional private school clothes
  • noun
  • /ˈprɛpi/
  • US
translation icon : preppy
  • You're not really a preppy, are you?
  • preppy look
  • preppy kid

Examples

  • That preppy-looking guy near the barbecue?

    Blog text (10)
  • And in school, you have skater kids, preppy kids, the cool kids, the nerds, right?

  • I was like this preppy student council, kind of like a little bit nerdy, like bookworm type vibe.

  • The men's style comes in preppy nylon and the women's style features classic leather.

    Blog text (24)
  • PARK - DAY 9: COURT REYNOLDS, an Aryan seventeen-year-old preppy, wears a Polo sweater with an American flag.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • At the party, all the preppy kids wore matching blazers and ties.

  • She always dressed in a preppy style, opting for cardigans and pastel colors.

  • His preppy wardrobe included polo shirts and khaki pants, which were popular at his private school.

Synonyms

prep
vspreppy
  • Informal
68 5.2

A private secondary school or a student who attends it

is about dressing and acting in a neat traditional expensive style linked to schools

Compounds

A neat, classic style of clothing with blazers and ties like private school students wear

4.8

A neat, school-style way of dressing with blazers and polo shirts

How Preppy

preppy
  • US
6 7.7
dresser
11 3.9

Surface Forms

preppy singular
preppies plural

Morphology

preppy = prep (transparent) = prep + y

Derived by adding '-y' to 'prep' to denote a person characterized by prep style; the noun sense corresponds directly to the adjectival sense.

Etymology

Preppy comes from prep, short for preparatory, a school that 'prepares' students for college. A preppy is a student from that kind of school, so the word now means someone who dresses and acts in the neat, traditional, and often expensive way of those schools.