trophy wife

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English

Etymology

Popularized by Julie Connelly in a 1989 Fortune magazine cover story, by analogy with a real estate trophy building.[1][2][3] (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “An editor of the Wikipedia trophy wife page thinks it is older, possibly 1950 or 1965”)

Pronunciation

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Noun

trophy wife (plural trophy wives)

  1. (derogatory) A wife, usually young and attractive, regarded as a status symbol for the husband, usually older and affluent.
    • 1991, Douglas Coupland, “It Can't Last”, in Generation X, New York: St. Martin's Press, →OCLC, page 34:
      […] while Mrs. Scott-Baxter, his fourth (and trophy) wife, blonde and young and bored, glowered at the Baxter spawn like a mother mink in a mink farm, just waiting for a jet to strafe the facility, affording her an excuse to feign terror and eat her young.
    • 1993 March, Sally Ogle Davis, “The good, the bad and the disasters”, in Ladies' Home Journal, page 57:
      But don't expect this one to break up. Arnold got his trophy wife—a real-life Kennedy, his entreé to the top social echelons in the country—and he's not about to let her go.
    • 2008, Julia Llewellyn, The Model Wife, Penguin UK, →ISBN:
      ‘She's with her nanny.’ ‘Oh yeah, I forgot. You're a proper trophy wife now. Staff and everything. Well…’ She produced a bottle of cava from a plastic bag. ‘With no child to keep up appearances for, let's get ourselves in the mood.’
    • 2013, George G. Nyman, Love Lost in Time Relativity, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 12:
      She was David's fourth wife. Twenty-four years his junior, they both knew why they were together. David was filthy rich, and Belinda was a trophy wife. In fact, this was her third time around in this career: Being a trophy wife.

Translations

See also

References

  1. ^ Julie Connelly (1989 August 28) “The CEO’s Second Wife”, in Fortune Magazine‎: “Powerful men are beginning to demand trophy wives. […] The more money men make, the argument goes, the more self-assured they become, and the easier it is for them to think: I deserve a queen.”
  2. ^ William Safire (1994 May 1) “ON LANGUAGE; Trophy Wife”, in The New York Times‎
  3. ^ Jay M. Shafritz, Daniel Oran (1990) “trophy wife”, in The New American Dictionary of Business and Finance, Penguin, →ISBN, page 476

Further reading

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