: lavish or wasteful spending thought to enhance social prestige
Examples of conspicuous consumption in a Sentence
a culture of conspicuous consumption
Recent Examples on the WebWine, once the height of boomer culture and conspicuous consumption, has lost its cool among young, more frugal and health-conscious potential customers, many of whom prefer cannabis over Cabernet, experts say.—Louis Sahagún, Los Angeles Times, 1 Apr. 2024 Hung’s private artists work in a culture of conspicuous consumption, challenging their judgmental diners who follow high, strict standards of excellence.—Armond White, National Review, 9 Feb. 2024 On a street lined with high-end stores like Chanel and Canada Goose stood a young woman handing out free coffee to lure people into a storefront that has nothing — or maybe everything — to do with conspicuous consumption.—Helene Stapinski, New York Times, 29 Dec. 2023 On one hand, some people condemned its commodification of luxury and emphasis on conspicuous consumption, while others called out its failure to meaningfully protest luxury’s exclusionary practices.—Shelcy Joseph, Essence, 18 Jan. 2024 Nothing pairs better with mass conspicuous consumption quite like pop culture nostalgia bait.—Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 1 Nov. 2023 In Italy, mortadella’s prestige peaked during the Renaissance, when ingredients like peppercorns from East Asia and pistachios from the Mediterranean were fabulously expensive, and artful food became a medium of conspicuous consumption for families like the Medici and the Borgias.—Julia Moskin, New York Times, 28 Nov. 2023 But Barbie symbolizes something more: conspicuous consumption.—Michelle Singletary, Washington Post, 19 July 2023 Browne has turned it into a badge of conspicuous consumption.—Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'conspicuous consumption.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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