Meanings
Jappy1
comparative more Jappy · superlative most Jappy
- derogatoryethnicslangslurJapanese.
To be really Jappy...
1959, Beatrice Plumb, The Master Banquet and Party Book, T. S. Denison & Company, pages 851 more example
When George moved to London later that year Jennie received him at her home, wearing a loose Japanese kimono instead of the conventional whale-boned corset and gown. The young, infatuated lieutenant wrote ecstatically of the 'lovely Jappy gown'.
1898 (2005), George Cornwallis-West, quoted in Elizabeth Kehoe, The Titled Americans: Three American Sisters And the British Aristocratic World Into Which They Married, page 206
Jappy2
- derogatoryethnicnot comparableslangslurMaterialistic and shallow in a way stereotypically associated with Jewish women.
1992, Janice L. Booker, Yale Strom, The Expulsion of the Jews: Five Hundred Years of Exodus, Spi Books Trade Nora once described a neighbor who was a convert to Judaism . “ She converted the whole way , ” she said . “ She is as Jappy as anybody on the block.
5 more examples
... erasing the term from society's consciousness without changing Jewish women's "Jappy" behavior makes about as much sense as a campaign to eradicate lung cancer while insisting on people's right to smoke.
1989, Carol Diament, Jewish Marital Status: A Hadassah Study, Jason AronsonIt was then that I began associating being Jewish with being Jappy and snobbish.
1995, Myrna Frommer, Harvey Frommer, Growing Up Jewish in America: An Oral History, Harcourt, →ISBNEvelyn Torton Beck writes, "I have repeatedly heard young Jewish women admit that they would be offended to be called 'too Jewy,' but claim not to mind being called 'too Jappy.' "
1995, Ellen Jaffe-Gill, Ellen Jaffe McClain, Embracing the Stranger: Intermarriage and the Future of the American Jewish Community, Basic BooksI got my rap down with the Jewish girls. I was foreign to them, I didn't dress well. The jappier the better.
2016, Kevin Morris, All Joe Knight: A Novel, Open Road + Grove/Atlantic, →ISBNToday, the stereotype is no longer immediately associated with Jews, as in Legally Blonde or Beverly Hills 90210 or The O.C., where the Jappiest characters are not even Jewish.
2008, Nathan Abrams, Jews and Sex, →ISBN
Origin
Jappy · adjective
From Japanese or Jap (“offensive slur towards Japanese people”) + -y.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Jappy. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Jappy
“Jappy.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Jappy. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Jappy,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Jappy.
Source: Jappy on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.