leisure class

1. The rich, so called because they can afford not to work. The term was made current by the economist Thorstein Veblen in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class .

Example Sentences

Swirling her glass of wine, she remains puzzled and furious at the blithe acceptance of this apocalyptic event by her feckless husband, Bruce, a wealth manager, and her standard-issue Manhattan leisure-class coterie: the bickering artsy couple, the hanger-on magazine editor with no money, the diffident gay decorator.

From New York Times

The promoters are dreaming of making it big in business; the girls are dreaming of making it big in the fashion industry … and the whole thing is this globally interconnected tribe of upper-class, leisure-class people, hopping from one place to the next.

From Slate

To some, the scene on the pier recalled “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” Georges Seurat’s pointillist painting of bourgeois Parisians lounging near the Seine, which is shaded with a rebuke of their leisure-class pursuits.

From New York Times

Growing up in Merrick, Long Island, Michael Kors was surrounded by women who loved fashion: “My mother was a former Revlon model, my grandmother was obsessed with Bill Blass and beige and I had two midriff-bearing aunts who idolized Cher,” says the designer, who drew dresses in the sand at the family beach club, where he first observed the leisure-class glamour that would become his eponymous label’s signature.

From New York Times

She was a leisure-class beauty who devoted her days to philanthropy and culture.

From Washington Post

Related Words

• affluent
• upscale
• wealthy
• well-heeled
• well-off
• well-to-do