Gopnik
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 In Russia, Eastern Europe, former Soviet republics, and other Slavic countries, a member of a subculture of young people of lower-class low-income backgrounds, mostly millennials, who usually live in the Russian suburbs. derogatory
- 1 A surname.
"Adam Gopnik has, by many accounts, including his own, a lovely life. A longtime staff writer for the New Yorker and bestselling author, Gopnik lives in Manhattan with his wife, Martha, a film-maker, and their two children, and he moves in the kind of circles that allow him to drop casual lines into conversation such as: “As John Updike once said to me …”, although he has the nervy Jewish self-consciousness to follow that with “… if you’ll forgive the namedrop.” […] The Gopniks smiled calmly: this was all par for the course for them."
Example
More examples"Adam Gopnik has, by many accounts, including his own, a lovely life. A longtime staff writer for the New Yorker and bestselling author, Gopnik lives in Manhattan with his wife, Martha, a film-maker, and their two children, and he moves in the kind of circles that allow him to drop casual lines into conversation such as: “As John Updike once said to me …”, although he has the nervy Jewish self-consciousness to follow that with “… if you’ll forgive the namedrop.” […] The Gopniks smiled calmly: this was all par for the course for them."
Etymology
Borrowed from Russian го́пник (gópnik).
Related phrases
More for "gopnik"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.