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Plath

Tacherie

Senior Member
Spanish - Argentina
Hello,
To be a Plath means to be a melancholic, despondent, sad person.
I was wondering however where does this expression come from. Is it related by any chance to poet Sylvia Plath who suffered from depression?
It'll be really helpful to know, for me to decide what is the best way to translate this into my language. Thank you!
You tell us this, Tacherie, but I've never heard the word, neither has any dictionary I know.

What are your reasons for thinking there is such a word? It sounds to me like a word from a private language, and we only deal in public ones.
You might be familiar with the movie Carrie. In the version I'm watching right now, this is a description of her by another student, who also describes several high school cliques in a sort of, as she calls it, "food chain." So yes, it seems to be specific to their language. However I found the expression googling, not sure if with the exact same meaning: "I think I was too awkward, ethnic looking, and weird growing up to be a Plath Girl"
The definition I copied comes directly from my client's notes (done by American English native speakers), so I assume this is the case of a colloquial expression that hasn't made any dictionaries yet.
Hello,
To be a Plath means to be a melancholic, despondent, sad person.
Is it related by any chance to poet Sylvia Plath who suffered from depression?

Someone well acquainted with 20th century American literature would take your meaning, but I must agree in essence with TT (post 2). "Plath" can not yet be offered as a synonym for melancholic.
Thank you cyberpedant for your opinion. Just for the record, though, I'm just trying to give a faithful translation to the word used by finding out its etymology, not to coin a term.
I agree that the term Plath girl is not commonly used.

To me, if I read it, I would immediately think the author meant one of the depressed mentally ill girls in Sylvia Plath's novel, the Bell Jar.

What is puzzling is why you can't be a Plath girl if you are awkward and ethnic-looking. I have never read the Bell Jar. Were they all wasps?
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I agree that the term Plath girl is not commonly used.

To me, if I read it, I would immediately thing the author meant one of the depressed mentally ill girls in Sylvia Plath's novel, the Bell Jar.

What is puzzling is why you can't be a Plath girl if you are awkward and ethnic-looking. I have never read read the Bell Jar. Were they all wasps?
Hello, Tacherie. She is surely referring to Sylvia Plath.

Hello, Embonpoint. Plath's novel and diary reveal her great awareness of what was fashionable during her college days. Although not all the characters in "The Bell Jar" are wasps, the work is full of references to things that are wholesome, waspish (?), and much like the stereotypes you can find in "Leave it to Beaver" and similar shows that portray American life in the fifties. I found this surprising in a woman whose confessional poetry seems like such an assault on these old ideas about healthy living and what it should look like.
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Based on owlman's last post, I think it's confirmed. You could translate into Spanish something like "to be a girl in a Sylvia Plath novel" to make it clearer to readers.
Embonpoint, only based on grammar, I would think it's at best ambiguous whether a Plath is someone like Sylvia Plath or like a Sylvia Plath character... fortunately I have a way to be ambiguous in Spanish too 👁 Smile :)
Confirmation was all I needed in this particular case, thank you guys so much!
Cyberpedant (off-topic or not, I always appreciate learning something new 👁 Smile :)
)
Embonpoint, only based on grammar, I would think it's at best ambiguous whether a Plath is someone like Sylvia Plath or like a Sylvia Plath character... fortunately I have a way to be ambiguous in Spanish too 👁 Smile :)
Confirmation was all I needed in this particular case, thank you guys so much!
Cyberpedant (off-topic or not, I always appreciate learning something new 👁 Smile :)
)

As an AE speaker somewhat familiar with the Bell Jar (though I haven't read it), I immediately thought it meant a girl in the novels, not a girl like Sylvia herself. I would have no question at all as a native speaker that this is what is meant. The reason is that if I meant a girl like Sylvia Plath herself I would have said something different ie. a Plath clone or a Plath-type girl.

A Plath girl, written like that, to me absolutely means someone in the novel. For example, a Ziegfield girl is someone who danced in the Ziegfield Follies, not someone who resembled Ziegfield. A Brodie girl in the movie the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a girl who idolized her and was in essence her creation- not someone who resembles Brodie herself. Etc.
OK, I get where you're taking it, but that's not my text... As I said, that's just some other reference I googled to see if the expression was used in any other instances. My text is simply "a Plath."
OK, I get where you're taking it, but that's not my text... As I said, that's just some other reference I googled to see if the expression was used in any other instances. My text is simply "a Plath."

Oh. That is ambiguous. It is more likely Sylvia herself. Was she a wasp like her characters?
You mean the Plath or the girl that calls her that? I don't think wasps are relevant here. It's Carrie, in one of the re-makes... you know, the outcast high school girl who gets humiliated in prom, goes crazy and causes all sort of devastation.
In your text you say she can't be a Plath because she is awkward and ethnic. Reading this as Sylvia Plath only makes sense if Sylvia herself is waspy. Nothing prevents ethnic awkward girls from being mentally ill and depressed.
Oh. I'm sorry, I'm not very focused on that particular piece of text. And I don't know too much about Sylvia Plath either, although I'm now definitely curious.
I have never heard this expression, but I have read The Bell Jar (very interesting though it becomes a bit of a downer when you consider what happened to Plath), and I am pretty sure it means "a girl like those in Plath's novel." I would assume it was referring to the novel's protagonist, but it could refer to some of the other young women as well, most of whom were (as far as I can remember) middle-class or upper-middle-class girls with good educations and high aspirations, but in addition almost all of them are at least somewhat neurotic and unsatisfied in various ways.
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