WOOPIE

noun Also written WOOP or woopy (People and Society) A well-off older person; a member of a socio-economic group composed of retired people who are still sufficiently affluent to have an active lifestyle and to be significant consumers. Etymology: Formed on the initial letters of Well-Off Older Person and the diminutive suffix -ie, after the model of yuppie. History and Usage: One of many humorous terms for social groupings that followed in the wake of yuppie in the second half of the eighties. The fact that the acronym is still nearly always explained when the word is used suggests that it has not really gained a place in the language. However, in view of the increasing numerical importance of retired people in Western societies (and consequently their significance as consumers) it might yet prove an important word. Other attempts to categorize (or acronymize) more or less the same social group have included GLAM (Greying Leisured Affluent Middle-aged), Zuppie (Zestful Upscale People in their Prime) and Third Ager (in the sense in which Third Age is used in University of the Third Age, etc.: the years of retirement). Mrs Edwina Currie...claimed that many pensioners were well off...'We're in the age of the "woopy"--the well-off old person--and it is about time we all recognised that fact, planned for our own future and helped them to enjoy theirs,' she said. Daily Telegraph 23 Apr. 1988, p. 1 Woopies will stimulate demand into the 1990s says Connell. headline in Property Weekly (Oxford) 22 June 1989, p. 1 Dick Tracy gets everybody, from the fast-growing pensioner market who remember the old comic strip, to the WOOPS (Well-Off Older Persons) and Baby-boomers who want to see Warren Beatty in a hit movie again. Guardian 24 May 1990, p. 30