"WASP" meaning in All languages combined

See WASP on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Forms: WASPs [plural], Wasp [alternative], wasp [alternative]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} WASP (plural WASPs)
  1. (US) Acronym of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a member of the supposed ruling class of America. Tags: US, abbreviation, acronym, alt-of Alternative form of: White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (extra: a member of the supposed ruling class of America) Derived forms: non-WASP, non-WASPy, WASPish, WASPy Coordinate_terms: European-American, white person Coordinate_terms (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant): Anglospherian
    Sense id: en-WASP-en-noun-MF6T7AxG Categories (other): American English, English links with redundant wikilinks, English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Sociology, United States Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 54 46 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 48 52 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 50 50 Disambiguation of Sociology: 100 0 Disambiguation of United States: 79 21 Disambiguation of 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestant': 97 3
  2. (historical) Initialism of Women Airforce Service Pilots. Tags: abbreviation, alt-of, historical, initialism Alternative form of: Women Airforce Service Pilots
    Sense id: en-WASP-en-noun-y9nU~aQo Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 54 46 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 48 52 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 50 50
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Categories (other): People Disambiguation of People: 0 0

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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          "text": "Bill got to college only by dint of support from a female relative and heiress (a useful WASP resource) and by scholarships, then a symbol of WASP entitlement.",
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          "ref": "1993 October 31, Maureen Dowd, quoting Joseph Alsop, “The WASP Descendancy”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 24 Jan 2022:",
          "text": "Joseph Alsop, the acerbic columnist she married in 1961, called his crowd “the ever-diminishing group of survivors of the WASP ascendancy.” It was a world of perfect manners and closely held power, not hugs and meaningful exchanges.",
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          "ref": "2002 November 26, Adrienne Crew, “BAP like me”, in Salon, archived from the original on 15 Jul 2007:",
          "text": "Growing up in white suburbs and attending elite schools and institutions of higher learning, black American prince and princesses are immersed in Anglo (often WASP) culture and emerge with modes of speech, behavior and grooming that brand them as \"Oreos,\" black on the outside and white in the middle.",
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          "ref": "2021 April 27, Doug Henwood, “Take Me to Your Leader: The Rot of the American Ruling Class”, in Jacobin, archived from the original on 28 Aug 2022:",
          "text": "We once had a coherent ruling class, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), who more or less owned and ran the United States from its founding through the 1970s. Based largely in the Northeast, with offshoots in the Upper Midwest, WASPs went to the same elite schools and colleges, belonged to the same clubs, married out of the same pool, and vacationed in the same favorite rural retreats. There were Southern WASPs, descendants of the slave-owning gentry, but they never had the social weight of their northern relatives—although they did rule their region and enjoy an outsized role in Congress for decades.",
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              159,
              163
            ]
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            ]
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-02-08 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-02-01 using wiktextract (f492ef9 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.