young fogey
- noun
- /jʌŋ ˈfoʊɡi/
- UK
:
joven anticuado
- He is such a young fogey for preferring vinyl records.
Examples
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He's such a young fogey, always resisting new technology.
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My dad is a young fogey; he refuses to use apps.
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Don’t be a young fogey; try something different!
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Many people think that being a young fogey is trendy.
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He's such a young fogey, always resisting new technology because he prefers traditional ways of doing things.
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Don’t be a young fogey; embrace the latest fashion trends instead of sticking to what is outdated!
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My friend is a young fogey who still believes that printed newspapers are the best way to get news.
Antonyms
How Old-Fashioned
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase combines 'young' (not old) with 'fogey' (a person resistant to modern ideas), so the meaning 'a young person with old-fashioned or conservative tastes' is directly and predictably derived from its parts; the apparent paradox (youth + old-fashionedness) does not obscure the compositional logic. This is a productive, literal modifier+noun pattern found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should understand the MWE.
Etymology
The phrase young fogey plays on the older word fogey, which called someone old-fashioned. So imagine a young person wearing old-style clothes and behaving like an old man, and you see why it means 'a young person with old-fashioned tastes'.