Akademik

(SNEEK.ur MIL.yun.ayr)

n.

A person who is very young and very wealthy, particularly someone who works in the technology industry.

To be sure, for most young people, rejection has a way of modulating dreams and making the dreamers tougher, more skeptical, less beamish. To older dot-commers, the promise of easy riches rings hollow. "I have friends who were millionaires for a week and a half," says Von Ronne. "I was not a sneaker millionaire — I was in the store but never got to try on the shoes."

— David Mehegan, "Out but not down," The Boston Globe, February 11, 2001

Those fears are miles away from the streets of Brookline, Mass., as agent Debbie Gordon steers her Jeep between listings, her two cell phones at the ready. Lately Gordon has been selling million-dollar homes to sneaker millionaires, her nickname for Boston's young fund managers and silicon CEOs.

— John McCormick and Daniel McGinn, "Through the Roof!," Newsweek, August 9, 1999