Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Aspiring to or emulating the middle class.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Having
social aspirations ; or pretending to bemiddle class
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Barstow's special subject, in such novels as the wonderful A Kind of Loving inset left, was what he called the "lace-curtain working class" - the "respectable poor" who, as the friend invoked in his autobiography explains, are acquainted with "poverty, but not squalor".
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Sounding every bit the lace-curtain, pursed-lipped scold, and looking for all the world like a well-coiffed, portly incarnation of what writer Katherine Anne Porter once described as "one of those Irish Catholic girls born with an ingrained fear of sex," Gallagher upbraided Moakler, who is also the director of the Miss California U.S.A. organization, for her "tone" and the organization's response to Prejean.
Michael Rowe: Regarding Miss California, At Least Anita Bryant Could Sing 2009
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They argued over who was more Irish: the lace-curtain Irish versus the shanty Irish.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: All in the Family Jack Canfield 2009
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His home life and mother—yes, I can do my mother—a set of characters in herself, a lace-curtain Bernhardt who can soak you in guilt but also tell you a story with six characters, do a voice for each one of them and come up with a punch line.
Last Words George Carlin 2009
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They argued over who was more Irish: the lace-curtain Irish versus the shanty Irish.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: All in the Family Jack Canfield 2009
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They argued over who was more Irish: the lace-curtain Irish versus the shanty Irish.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: All in the Family Jack Canfield 2009
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She was a woman with decidedly aristocratic pretensions, indoctrinated with the idea that she was “lace-curtain Irish,” as opposed to the shanty kind with its stereotypes of drinking, lawlessness, laziness, rowdiness, all the things which—to the degree that ethnic generalities have any meaning—come from that side of their national character that makes the Irish fun.
Last Words George Carlin 2009
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They argued over who was more Irish: the lace-curtain Irish versus the shanty Irish.
Chicken Soup for the Soul: All in the Family Jack Canfield 2009
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Pat was dismissed early on by Ma as “being a Carlin” and having the “dirty, rotten Carlin temper” and I became in her eyes “a Bearey,” a scion of her superior, cultured, lace-curtain ancestry.
Last Words George Carlin 2009
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Two guineas, one hunky funky lace-curtain Irish mick.
hernesheir commented on the word lace-curtain
A fine adjective, this.
February 12, 2011