request

[Arnold Zwicky]

joe pickett, replying to my wondering about whether i can be
described as a GUPPIE at my age:

  Maybe you're a muppie, which according to AHD3 is

  A middle-aged or mature professional person, especially one
  considered to be affluent, ambitious, and trendy.

  We actually deleted this term from AHD4.  It is one of a small
  number of vocabulary deletes we made.

upper end of middle-aged.  not so sure about mature, except in age.
affluent, for a humanities professor.  dubious about ambitious.
certainly not trendy.  but i guess i'm within range of MUPPIE.

unfortunately, MUPPIE loses that significant G.

it's also a word i can't believe ever got used nonjokingly.  so it's
surely a good thing that AHD4 abandoned it.  (i just got my copy of
AHD4, by the way.  these new editions *are* getting heavy, aren't
they?)

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu), who recalls discovering the
  rev. r.j. lechmere guppy, of trinidad, in a dictionary
  many years ago