trophy wife

English

Etymology

Popularized by Julie Connelly in a 1989 Fortune magazine cover story, by analogy with a real estate trophy building. (This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “An editor of the Wikipedia trophy wife page thinks it is older, possibly 1950 or 1965”)

Noun

trophy wife (plural trophy wives)

1. (derogatory) A wife, usually young and attractive, regarded as a status symbol for the husband, usually older and affluent.
   • 1991, Douglas Coupland, “It Can't Last”, in Generation X, New York: St. Martin's Press, →OCLC:

     […] 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.

   • 1993 March, Sally Ogle Davis, “The good, the bad and the disasters”, in Ladies' Home Journal, page 57:

     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.

   • 2008, Julia Llewellyn, The Model Wife, Penguin UK (→ISBN)

     ‘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.’

   • 2013, George G. Nyman, Love Lost in Time Relativity, AuthorHouse (→ISBN), page 12:

     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.

Translations

young attractive wife who's a status symbol for her husband

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 花瓶老婆 (huāpíng lǎopó), 花瓶妻 (huāpíngqī)

• Danish: trofækone c
• Finnish: edustusvaimo
• French: potiche (fr) f
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• German: Vorzeigefrau f, Trophäenfrau f (often derogatory)
• Hebrew: אישה לקישוט, אישה ייצוגית, אישה לראווה
• Hungarian: please add this translation if you can
• Japanese: please add this translation if you can

See also

• arm candy

Further reading

• trophy wife on Wikipedia.Wikipedia