Meaning:
Businessmen/bureaucrats/soldiers and the like who follow convention and the
company line. Also called just `suits'.
Background:
The literal meaning, that is, males wearing suits has obviously been part of
the language for as long as suits have. The phrase was first used with a
specific rather than general meaning to refer to US sports players - the
suits being the sporting gear. This usage is known since at least the 1930s -
for example, this piece from The Ogden Standard-Examiner, April 1933:
"It is expected that around 80 participants will take the field Friday
afternoon. Ogden will probably lead the schools with close to 35 men in
suits while Davis and Weber, will run between 20 and 25 men apiece."
It isn't clear who first used the term `men in suits' to describe
conventional business people. John Lennon described the people who controlled
The Beatles' financial interests as `men in suits'.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's a dissing term, although the literal meaning sounds neutral. The
neighborhood bookshop owner Kathleen Kelly in "You've Got Mail" shrugged off
with extra contempt Joe Fox, a multi-millionaire opening a big-box chain
bookstore nearby, as "nothing but a suit."
Garrison Keillor didn't seem to mind. "I'm a man in a suit now. I'm happy to be
a man in a suit" he blithely declared in a film about his show, A Prairie Home
Companion. But he's a humorist and should be understood backward.
