to keep up with the Joneses
4
7.5
- idiom
- Informal
:
mantenerse al día con los vecinos
- Many people feel pressured to keep up with the Joneses by buying new cars and expensive clothes.
- try to keep up with the Joneses
- pressure to keep up with the Joneses
- want to keep up with the Joneses
You know, there's, there's so much keeping up with the Joneses.
- You know, there's, there's so much keeping up with the Joneses.
- Like, like it's what has led me to places like insecurity and keeping up with the Joneses and judgment and parenting.
Examples
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I did not try to keep up with the Joneses.
Blog text (19) -
See, in today's competitive parental environment, keeping up with the Joneses is a big deal to some families.
Blog text (31) -
Trying to keep up with the Joneses.
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Just to keep up with the Joneses.
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And all she ever thought about was keeping up with the Joneses.
Fiction book (2000) -
Someone whose only goal in life is to keep up with the Joneses.
Blog text (20) -
But despite the good hair, stop trying to keep up with the Joneses.
Blog text (24) -
In the end, this keeping up with the Joneses mentality is about money.
Blog text (8) -
Most people who remain wealthy don't try to keep up with the Joneses.
Blog text (34) -
I don't buy that, and keeping up with the Joneses is just so exhausting.
Blog text (32)
Antonyms
How Status-Conscious
- Informal
4
7.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
keep + up + with + the + Joneses
The verb phrase 'keep up with' is transparently understood as 'maintain pace with' from its constituents, but 'the Joneses' is a cultural proper-name label for one's neighbors/peers. A B1 learner who knows the words could guess a literal meaning ('keep pace with the Jones family') but would likely miss the socio-economic/consumerist nuance of matching neighbors' status, so the overall idiom is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Keep up with the Joneses comes from an old comic strip about a family who always tried to match their neighbors, the Joneses. The verb keep up means to stay level with someone, so the phrase now means 'to try to match' your neighbors' things or lifestyle.