Newswire:

Meet The Scuppies

It’s so hard to keep up with trends nowadays. Our parents? They were hippies. Our older brothers? First, they were preppies. Now, they’re just yuppies. And us? Well, we’re aiming to be scuppies. [USA Today]

Yes, scuppies. Socially conscious upwardly mobile persons. For serious.

A few things about scuppies that you should know: The eat, breathe, and sleep organic. They love Whole Foods. And Starbucks. Like Kermit, they think it’s easy being green. They want to live well while doing good.

“You can’t throw a stick and not hit one in Starbucks or the Whole Foods parking lot,” says Chuck Failla, who knows scuppies because he says he is one. “My whole living room was done by Novica.com,” the do-gooder artisan-promoting website.

And Failla should know — he basically coined the term. Failla has published “The Scuppie Manifesto” on his website (scuppie.com). He plans to officially launch the scuppie movement on Earth Day, April 22, and he’s aiming for Christmas to bring out his book, The Scuppie Handbook, a takeoff on 1980’s The Official Preppie Handbook. (Profits, naturally, will go to charity, he says.)

Failla runs a successful New York/Connecticut financial planning firm, and he’s a do-gooder, offering his services free to non-profit groups. He says he invented this latest neologism 10 years ago when he was a yuppie stockbroker (Armani suit and Rolex) doing pro bono work for a homeless organization.

Now, let’s get a bit meta: Why is it that every generation insists on having their own “ppie” suffix?

“Attaching this suffix to a word condenses a big idea into a small package so we’re more effective in our speech,” explains lexicographer Grant Barrett, co-host of the National Public Radio show A Way With Words. “Plus, it’s an acronym, so that makes our speech more efficient.” And there you have it.

We give up.

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