yopper
English edit
Etymology edit
Noun edit
yopper (plural yoppers)
- (informal) A person employed under the Youth Opportunities Programme in Britain in the 1980s.
- 1981, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party[1], page 72:
- There must be a real drive in the trade union movement and the Labour movement to recruit Yoppers and the unemployed.
- 2011, Susan Boyle, The Woman I was Born to be[2], page 120:
- When we came back to Blackburn I went on the Youth Opportunities Scheme and became a Yopper, which was the worst thing you could call a teenager in those days.
- 2013 April 10, David Morris, “Tributes to Baroness Thatcher”, in parliamentary debates (House of Commons), volume 560, column 1697:
- I started my first business as a Manpower allowance recipient, and, indeed, I entered my first job as a “yopper”.
- 2021 October 18, Neil MacPhail, “Teenage taste of school cooking experience led to 36-year career for Heather Matheson who has retired from Resolis Primary School”, in Ross-shire Journal[3]:
- Mrs Matheson […] owes her first taste of work after Fortrose Academy to the old Youth Opportunity Scheme […] Mrs Matheson said: "I was a Yopper first with the school cooking class and then at Tulloch Castle and the Education Centre, both in Dingwall."