trophy wife
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.13 in modern English
24
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A wife, usually young and attractive, regarded as a status symbol for her husband, usually older and affluent.
Derogatory; Informal
Example Sentences
- "[…] while Mrs. Scott-Baxter, his fourth (and trophy) wife, blonde and young and bored, glowered at the Baxter spawn like a mother mink in a mink farm, just waiting for a jet to strafe the facility, affording her an excuse to feign terror and eat her young."
- "But don't expect this one to break up. Arnold [Schwarzenegger] got his trophy wife—a real-life Kennedy, his entreé to the top social echelons in the country—and he's not about to let her go."
- ""Women considered trophy wives are accomplished and ambitious," she reported, "in both their careers and their lives. […] On what was trophy wife bottomed, as they say at the Supreme Court?"
- "‘She's with her nanny.’ ‘Oh yeah, I forgot. You're a proper trophy wife now. Staff and everything. Well…’ She produced a bottle of cava from a plastic bag. ‘With no child to keep up appearances for, let's get ourselves in the mood.’"
- "She was David's fourth wife. Twenty-four years his junior, they both knew why they were together. David was filthy rich, and Belinda was a trophy wife. In fact, this was her third time around in this career: Being a trophy wife."
Etymology
Popularized by Julie Connelly in a Fortune magazine cover story in 1989, by analogy with a real estate trophy building.