Old fogey is a nickname used to describe someone as slightly old fashioned: out of touch with modern ideals. A nickname is a short, clever, cute, derogatory, or otherwise substitute name for a person or things real name (for example, Tom is short for Thomas). ...
In 1811, an Old Fogey was a nickname for an invalid, wounded soldier; derived from the French word fougeux; fierce or fiery. The modern sense has changed the use a little, but there is still the element of invalid in the saying. Joyce Rollins is a lesbian. ...
Young fogey was humorously applied in a British context to some younger-generation but rather buttoned-down writers and journalists — examples being Charles Moore and (for a while) A. N. Wilson. The term is attributed to Alan Watkins writing in 1984 in The Spectator. Charles Moore (born October 31, 1956) is a former editor of the Daily Telegraph (1995-2003). ... Andrew Norman Wilson (born 1950) is an English writer, known for his biographies, novels and works of popular and cultural history. ... British journalist Alan Watkins is a columnist who writes on politics and rugby. ... The Spectator is a conservative British political magazine, established 1828, published weekly. ...
Young Fogey is also used to describe small 'c' conservative young men aged approximately between 15 and 40 who dress in a vintage style (usually that of the 1920s to the 1950s, also known as the 'Brideshead' look after the influence of 'Brideshead Revisited' by Evelyn Waugh), and who tend towards erudite, conservative cultural pursuits.
Old, somewhat shabby clothing is preferred such as heavy tweeds and antique dinner jackets, and the favoured mode of transport is the bicycle or Morris Minor. Popular pursuits are classical music, fine wines, pipesmoking, and ecclesiasticana, generally of the High Anglican or Roman Catholic persuasion.
The movement reached its peak in the mid eighties with adherents such as A.N. Wilson and Gavin Stamp. The movement declined in the nineties but still has a following amongst students at Oxbridge and the older universities, as well as in some professions, in particular the antiques and arts dealing world, and the minority classical architecture practices. For more information see 'The Young Fogey Handbook' by Suzanne Lowry.
"Fogey," of course, is, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it so well, "a disrespectful appellation for a man advanced in life, especially one with antiquated notions; an old-fashioned fellow." The word (also spelled "fogy," by the way) is probably Scottish in origin, but its ultimate roots are a bit uncertain.
"Fogey" is almost always preceded by the slightly redundant "old," but there are, indeed, "young fogeys." The term is most often used to refer to a group of young but conservative writers and novelists in England who came to prominence in the early 1980s.
I would like to think that one doesn't have to be an "oldfogey" or even a "young fogey" to object to "tabloid TV," "shock radio" and the popular fascination with "supermodels" which seem to have supplanted what was left of American culture, but I may be wrong.
In the old days, the Young Fogey, the character invented by Alan Watkins on these pages in 1984, would have been in the vanguard of the protesters, shrieking and whinnying away about the desecration of his haunts.
The two archetypes of the Young Fogey mentioned by Mr Watkins the journalist and novelist A.N. Wilson, and Dr John Casey, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge were only in their thirties at the time, and so are now in their fifties and in rude health.
The term fogey dates from the 18th century, and is related to the slang word fogram, of unknown origin, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
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