So is sheeple a word?
Citadel/USA
My first reaction to ‘multiculti sheeple’ was that it was a typo. But, when I did a Google search, sheeple received about 700,000 hits (at my space-time coordinates), all of which I astutely reasoned couldn’t have been typos. Incidentally, ‘multiculti’ (1990) is short for ‘multicultural.’<2013 “The ad clearly violates the NFL’s ban on Super Bowl ads for ‘firearms, ammunition, or other weapons.’ . . . But in the end, the NFL’s refusal to air the commercial is meaningless. . . In fact, Daniel Defense [[a gun manufacturer]] may have tried to buy Super Bowl time expecting that the ad would be banned; in the subculture of ‘gun nuts,’ disapproval by powerful forces is a ‘badge of honor.’ The companies forbidden AR-15 instantly became a ‘status object, a talisman’ signifying defiance of ‘the socialist multiculti sheeple.’ As the banned ad now goes viral on the Internet, it will sell more rifles to dudes in camouflage than a $4 million Super Bowl spot ever would.”—The Week, 20 December, page 15>
_______________________<1945 “The People, as ever (I spell it ‘Sheeple’), will stand anything.”—The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, March, page 84/1>
<1949 “With so many ‘sheeple’ in this country it is little wonder that mountebanks in many fields of endeavor have thrived and grown fat.”—Old Hokum Bucket by E. Rogers, ix. page 212>
<1981 “The worst tax of all is ‘inflation’, the word that is used to try and pacify the ‘sheeple’.”—The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York), 18 July, psge c1/1>
<1984 “This is the home of Barbara Anderson and the headquarters of her American Opinion Bookstore. The store, in a dusty room behind dusty curtains near her front door, stocks about 500 right-wing tracts . . . Mrs. Anderson begins every book sale with a lecture, and in this instance she derides taxpayers in general as submissive ‘sheep people’ — or ‘sheeple’ for short.”—Wall Street Journal, 27 February> [[Note: In 2002, Word Spy listed this quote as being the earliest appearance in print. Wikipedia, failing to check the OED, also lists this as the first in print.]]
<1997 “If Paul Allen [[Microsoft]] will spend $20 million to buy this team, how much do you think he will spend on propaganda to get a yes vote from the sheeple?”—The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington), 26 April>
<2002 “Speaker Finneran informed his sheeple, I mean people, of their impending ‘voluntary’ pay cuts at a caucus Wednesday afternoon.”—Boston Herald (Massachusetts),
1 March>
<2006 “A lightning rod in the tempest surrounding 9/11 conspiracy theories, University of Wisconsin-Madison lecturer Kevin Barrett Sunday divided the public into ‘sheeple,’ those who believe the official version of events, and TMMs, those who subscribe to the truth movement.’”—The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin), 2 October>
<2010 “But once the Tuesday filing deadline passes, the sheeple in the House can get back to the only game they really understand - rubber-stamping huge tax increases to keep their hack friends and relatives on the payroll.”—Boston Herald (Massachusetts), 25 April>
<2013 “The radio talk market is dominated by outspoken political conservatives lobbing verbal grenades at big government, silly liberals, backstabbing Republicans-in-name-only, the lamestream media and the pathetic sheeple who blindly follow all of the preceding.”—The Washington Times (D.C.), 4 February>
Consistent with the lack of British English Ngram hits, I'm pretty sure I've never yet heard sheeple being used in the UK. But then, British politics is not quite as vitriolically partisan as the American variety, nor yet quite as broken.Ken Greenwald wrote:An Ngram for British English produced nada!!
.. and a blog called The Daily Sheeple ..Lo and behold, just when I thought the majority of minions running amok around this country were burying their heads in sand like an obedient Obama ostrich, new statistics appear to indicate that the sheeple are starting to get smarter.