Davos Man

noun

The global financial elite, represented as a stereotypical attendee of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Meanings

Davos Man1

nounDavos Man (plural (uncommon) Davos Men)

plural uncommon Davos Men · alternative Davos man

  1. The global financial elite, represented as a stereotypical attendee of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

    So Davos man has a troublesome pre-history of combining brilliance and stupidity, of being blinded by national and ideological prejudice to his own long-term interest and destroying with one hand what he has built with the other.

    2005 February 3, Timothy Garton Ash, “Davos man's death wish”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 01 Jul 2017
    2 more examples

    The rewards of an increasingly integrated global economy have brought forth a new global elite. Labeled ‘Davos Men’, ‘gold-collar workers’ or . . . ‘cosmocrats’, this emerging class is empowered by new notions of global connectedness. It includes academics, international civil servants and executives in global companies, as well as successful high-technology entrepreneurs.

    2004, Samuel P. Huntington, “Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite”, in The National Interest, number 75, →ISSN, pages 5–18

    Although Lexiteers have little patience for the national nihilism of “Davos Man,” the globalist elite, we are no xenophobes. […] It has been a colossal error by Davos Man left-wingers to think of nation-states as embarrassing anachronisms hostile to democracy.

    2017 March 28, Alan Johnson, “Why Brexit Is Best for Britain: The Left-Wing Case”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 09 Nov 2020

Davos man2

nounDavos man (plural Davos men)

plural Davos men

  1. Alternative letter-case form of Davos Man.

Origin

Coined by American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in the early 2000s.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

Davos Man. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Davos%20Man

MLA

“Davos Man.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Davos%20Man. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Davos Man,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Davos%20Man.

Source: Davos Man on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.