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Preppy is a term in the American popular vocabulary, traditionally used to describe the characteristics of patrician, White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants (usually with some personal or familial connection to New England; e.g. WASP) who attend or attended major private, secondary preparatory schools. These characteristics include particular subcultural speech, vocabulary, accent, dress, mannerisms, etiquette, and general way of being. Lisa Birnbach's 1980 Official Preppy Handbook is a good, albeit tongue-in-cheek, "guide" to the preppy subculture. Paul Fussell's book Status: A Guide to the American Class System discusses the sociological implications of the preppy subculture.
In recent years, the term has come to describe those who affect some popular, bourgeois physical manifestation of the preppy subculture. In many cases, this usage pertains merely to a person's dress, and not their geographical location, upbringing, or other traditionally "preppy" characteristic. In such cases, those described as "preppy" are not, in fact, preppies.
The term is similar in formation to hippie or yuppie, and had great currency in the 1970s and 1980s.
Some notable preparatory schools:
- The Agnes Irwin School (Rosemount, Pennsylvania)
- The Bryn Mawr School (Baltimore, Maryland)
- The Cate School (Carpinteria, California)
- The Chapin School (New York, New York)
- Charlotte Country Day School (Charlotte, North Carolina)
- Choate Rosemary Hall (Wallingford, Connecticut)
- Collegiate School (New York, New York)
- The Dalton School (New York, New York)
- Dana Hall School (Wellesley, Massachusetts)
- Deerfield Academy (Deerfield, Massachusetts)
- The Episcopal Academy (Merion, Pennsylvania)
- Episcopal High School (Alexandria, Virginia)
- Foxcroft School (Middlesburg, Virginia)
- The Gilman School (Baltimore, Maryland)
- Groton School (Groton, Massachusetts)
- Hawken School (Gates Mill, Ohio)
- The Hockaday School (Dallas, Texas)
- The Hotchkiss School (Lakeville, Connecticut)
- The Latin School of Chicago (Chicago, Illinois)
- Lawrence Academy at Groton (Groton, Massachusetts)
- The Lawrenceville School (Lawrenceville, New Jersey)
- The Lovett School (Atlanta, Georgia)
- The Madeira School (Greenway, Virginia)
- Mary Institute Country Day School (St. Louis, Missouri)
- McCallie School (Chattanooga, Tennessee)
- Middlesex School (Concord, Massachusetts)
- Milton Academy (Milton, Massachusetts)
- Miss Porter's School (Farmington, Connecticut)
- Morristown-Beard School (Morristown, NJ)
- The Pembroke Hill School (Kansas City, Missouri)
- Phillips Academy (Andover, Massachusetts)
- Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter, New Hampshire)
- St. Mark's School of Texas (Dallas, Texas)
- St. Paul's School (Concord, New Hampshire)
- The Trevor Day School (New York, New York)
- The Winsor School (Boston, Massachusetts)
- Woodberry Forest School (Woodberry Forest, Virginia)
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