The Misanthrope’s Corner

THE definition of “elitist” is spinning out of control. Nailing it down is much harder than mastering French verbs. If you say “baiser” instead of “embrasser” and somebody takes you up on it, you can have a lot of fun being wrong, but elitist means so many things to so many people that you are damned if you do and damned if you do. Soon it will be possible to list on a three-by-five card all the things that are not elitist and still have plenty of room left for the phone numbers of liquor stores that deliver.

This never happened with “elite.” Like “deluxe,” it was an advertising word that generations of Americans took in stride. Sometimes they got it mixed up with its opposite, “hoi polloi,” but it never became a hot button; its few conversational uses were lighthearted, as in “where the elite meet.” Perhaps it was protected by the French acute accent (élite) it used to carry— after all, back when “fantasy” was spelled “phantasy” people did not describe their own in public. But elitist never had a French accent mark. Starting life with nothing but a good old American politicized suffix, it pulled itself up by its rootstraps to become the epithet of choice for both sides of the political spectrum. Left or Right, elitist means . . . something bad.

About the Author

Florence King

Florence King was a contributing editor of National Review.

Featured Tags

THE definition of “elitist” is spinning out of control. Nailing it down is much harder than mastering French verbs. If you say “baiser” instead of “embrasser” and somebody takes you up on it, you can have a lot of fun being wrong, but elitist means so many things to so many people that you are damned if you do and damned if you do. Soon it will be possible to list on a three-by-five card all the things that are not elitist and still have plenty of room left for the phone numbers of liquor stores that deliver.

This never happened with “elite.” Like “deluxe,” it was an advertising word that generations of Americans took in stride. Sometimes they got it mixed up with its opposite, “hoi polloi,” but it never became a hot button; its few conversational uses were lighthearted, as in “where the elite meet.” Perhaps it was protected by the French acute accent (élite) it used to carry— after all, back when “fantasy” was spelled “phantasy” people did not describe their own in public. But elitist never had a French accent mark. Starting life with nothing but a good old American politicized suffix, it pulled itself up by its rootstraps to become the epithet of choice for both sides of the political spectrum. Left or Right, elitist means . . . something bad.