trophy wife

English

Etymology

Popularized by Julie Connelly in a 1989 Fortune magazine cover story, by analogy with a real estate trophy building.[1][2][3] (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)

(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 22510632:
  […] 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
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

References

Julie Connelly (August 28, 1989), “The CEO’s Second Wife”, in Fortune Magazine‎: “Powerful men are beginning to demand trophy wives. […] The more money men make, the argument goes, the more self-assured they become, and the easier it is for them to think: I deserve a queen.”
William Safire (1994-05-01), “ON LANGUAGE; Trophy Wife”, in The New York Times‎
Jay M. Shafritz; Daniel Oran (1990), “trophy wife”, in The New American Dictionary of Business and Finance, Penguin, →ISBN, page 476