Waspish, a.2 orig. and chiefly U.S.
(ˈwɒspɪʃ)
Also Wasp-ish, WASPish.
[f. Wasp n.2 + -ish1.]
Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of American white Protestant ‘Wasps’. Cf. Waspy a.2
| 1968 Listener 27 June 843/3 Charles Newman, making a most impressive debut, gives in New Axis a picture of a community that is diametrically the opposite of Mr Baldwin's Harlem: that of an upper-middle-class WASPish suburb in an Illinois dormitory town. 1974 Times Lit. Suppl. 31 May 591/2 Postwar antisemitism in America... Echoes of haughty Waspish outrage..are to be heard in [this] silly novel about the marriage in 1946 of a sexy, clever Jewish girl from the wrong bit of New York to a handsome booby from an aristocratic Long Island family. 1978 E. Tidyman Table Stakes ii. v. 261 His WASPish good looks. 1983 Times 8 July 7/5 He is Scorsese's contemporary, but from a different, Wasp-ish social class. |