Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun narrow minded materialism

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

After the character in Sinclair Lewis' novel Babbitt

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Examples

  • Not many Americans still use the word babbittry, that wonderful term for naive boosterism similar to that of the title character of Babbitt.

    2008 September « One-Minute Book Reviews 2008

  • Not many Americans still use the word babbittry, that wonderful term for naive boosterism similar to that of the title character of Babbitt.

    2008 September 25 « One-Minute Book Reviews 2008

  • Sinclair Lewis invented a character, George F. Babbitt, who inspired a noun, babbittry

    Great Literature About Business 2010

  • But babbittry may help to explain the plight of my former colleague Donald Rosenberg, who was demoted last week to an arts-and-entertainment reporter from his longtime post as the senior classical music critic at the Plain Dealer.

    2008 September 25 « One-Minute Book Reviews 2008

  • But babbittry may help to explain the plight of my former colleague Donald Rosenberg, who was demoted last week to an arts-and-entertainment reporter from his longtime post as the senior classical music critic at the Plain Dealer.

    2008 September « One-Minute Book Reviews 2008

Comments

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  • probably should be capitalized: Babbittry - comes from the eponymous hero of Sinclair Lewis's 1922 novel Babbitt - a conventional, conformist businessman.

    December 6, 2007

  • Funny about the caps, seems an accident of history as to whether they stick or not. I'm happy with both Dickensian stereotypes and macadamised roads yet both are derived from proper names.

    December 6, 2007