Yuppie (short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional") refers to a 1980s and early 1990s term for financially secure, upper-middle class young people in their 20s and early 30s. Although the term yuppies had not appeared until the early 1980s, there was discussion about young urban professionals as early as 1968. Joseph Epstein is incorrectly credited for coining the term in 1982.

An early printed appearance of the word is in a May 1980 Chicago magazine article by Dan Rottenberg. The term gained currency in the United States in 1983 when syndicated newspaper columnist Bob Greene published a story about a business networking group founded in 1982 by the former radical leader Jerry Rubin, formerly of the Youth International Party (whose members were called yippies); Greene said he had heard people at the networking group (which met at Studio 54 to soft classical music) joke that Rubin had "gone from being a yippie to being a yuppie". The headline of Greene's story was From Yippie to Yuppie.

The proliferation of the word was effected by the publication of The Yuppie Handbook in January 1983, followed by Senator Gary Hart's 1984 candidacy as a "yuppie candidate" for President of the United States. The term was then used to describe a political demographic group of socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters favoring his candidacy. Newsweek magazine declared 1984 "The Year of the Yuppie", characterizing the salary range, occupations, and politics of yuppies as "demographically hazy".

Similar to 0 things you like: