The term sheeple, which first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1984, has been used increasingly in the last couple of years due to the marketing potential afforded by online and satellite channel media. It is often used to describe people who act in direct reaction to advertising, going out and buying the 'must-have ' fashions and fads of the moment. Sheeple is also used more generally to refer to people who don 't tend to think for themselves but basically follow the crowd or believe what the media tells them. In a June 2002 Guardian newspaper article, it was used to refer to individuals who had taken part in a survey resulting in the claim that 'four out of five Americans had said they would give up some freedom for greater security '.
In general people think for themselves, but sheeple 's thoughts and reactions are based on what they have been led to believe by others.
History...
The plural noun sheeple is what is technically referred to as a blend, a combination of the words sheep and people. A blend is a new word formed from parts of two or more words in such a way that it cannot be further analysed into morphemes (i.e. the smallest meaningful components of words). Other more familiar examples are brunch (breakfast and lunch) and chunnel (channel and tunnel). The concept of a blend is nothing new. In Lewis Carroll 's Alice Through the Looking Glass, written in 1872, Alice asks Humpty Dumpty to explain the words of a poem and he replies: 'Well slithy means lithe and slimy.'
August 5 2006 |
