NP "chatterati"

[Doug Millison]

The elite members of the chattering classes.

"While the London chatterati think a Labour landslide is a turn off, the
Scottish middle classes are quite willing to participate in inevitable
triumphs for the People's Party."
--Alex Bell, "A vote for the middle-class 'struggle'," The Herald, May 14,
2001

See Also: barking head, commentariat, punditeer, schmooseoisie

Backgrounder
----------
The chatterati includes members of the media (especially columnists), talk
show hosts, TV talking heads, and so on. Although such people have been
around for a long time, their particular social niche has only had a name
since about 1990:

"On the launch of the Scottish section in October 1988, the chatterati of
media and advertising dismissed it as a ''spoiler'' for Scotland on Sunday
conveniently ignoring the fact that it had been in the planning stages for
months."
--"Newspaper pays price for not observing basic rules," The Sunday Times,
July 22, 1990

Chatterati combines chattering classes, "the social group consisting of
those people who are educated, articulate, and opinionated," and the
suffix -rati, "the elite or intelligentsia of a particular group."
Chattering classes is a British colloquialism that entered the language in
the mid 1980s:

"Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth among the chattering classes,
the outlook for British broadcasting is actually rather cheery."
--"Outlook cheery," The Times, August 11, 1985

Thanks to subscriber Alex Poole for spying today's word.

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Words About Words:
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The unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure of speech
is too great for his income of ideas.
--Christopher Morley, American novelist and essayist, "Inward Ho!", 1923

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