How to Use social climber in a Sentence

social climber

noun
  • The shameless social climber was confronted and bowed out of the group.
    — Amy Dickinson, Washington Post, 25 June 2019
  • Prince Harry is a depressed man-child who is married to a social climber.
    — Ed Stockly, Los Angeles Times, 22 Nov. 2021
  • Is Cherry a scheming social climber?
    — Peter Larsen, Oc Register, 8 Sep. 2025
  • The novel once again featured socialites, social climbers and high society’s help in the cast.
    — Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Nov. 2017
  • No, this social climber climbed right off the battlefield, hosed off, changed into civvies, and rolled onto Rodeo Drive.
    — Frank Markus, Car and Driver, 9 Sep. 2023
  • Wiig plays Maxine, a social climber trying to land with the right movers and shakers in Palm Beach.
    — Marianne Garvey, CNN, 18 Mar. 2024
  • The space in between provides this shameless social climber a whirlwind tour of all the fame, fortune and romance a modern city can offer.
    — Peter Debruge, Variety, 6 Sep. 2021
  • As things go from bad to deadly, the question is, is Cherry a manipulative social climber?
    — Joe Otterson, Variety, 2 May 2024
  • The second is a series of apologies and excuses for a tax cheat, voyeur-sadist, bad son, skinflint, publicity hound, social climber, shopaholic.
    — Stephen Metcalf, Los Angeles Times, 22 Apr. 2020
  • There was, no doubt, some bigotry at play in the press’ assessment of al-Fayed as a desperate social climber who couldn’t quite grasp the elusive rules by which the upper class live.
    — Eliana Dockterman, Time, 9 Nov. 2022
  • In the mid aughts, the British tabloids frequently painted the Middletons as advantageous social climbers.
    — Elise Taylor, Vogue, 14 Dec. 2023
  • As for his latest role as manipulative and entitled social climber Adam Pratt in season 4 of You.
    — Brianne Tracy, Peoplemag, 1 Apr. 2023
  • From a very young age, Florence—social climber, businesswoman, grande horizontale, patron of the arts—perfected the art of filling the hours of her lovers.
    — Caroline Moorehead, WSJ, 2 Mar. 2018
  • The papers also painted Carole as an advantageous social climber.
    — Elise Taylor, Vogue, 14 Dec. 2023
  • Our research shows that from a psychological standpoint, social climbers fall into six basic personality types.
    — Dirk Wittenborn and Jazz Johnson, Town & Country, 10 Oct. 2014
  • But now, such societies tended to attract eccentrics and social climbers, people who were either all-in on the promise of attaining universal secrets or simply there to hob-nob.
    — Lizz Schumer, Peoplemag, 12 June 2024
  • Slavery and the American Revolution, notes of a social climber, monastic distractions, a French thriller and more.
    — Harold Holzer, WSJ, 20 Jan. 2023
  • Tom Wambsgans, by contrast, is merely power hungry, a social climber whose pathology is perfectly acceptable in the world that enables him.
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 7 Nov. 2025
  • One is a free or low-cost learning series about the composer-librettist pair, whose witty, tuneful works lampooned social climbers, the legal profession, the military, the class system and more.
    — Theater Critic, San Francisco Chronicle, 13 Feb. 2026
  • Born into a humble family, this ambitious social climber married the brother of Pope Innocent X.
    — Pamela McCourt Francescone, Travel + Leisure, 17 Mar. 2021
  • Because, my goodness, they’re set out on so much land — each the personal playgrounds of ambitious chefs and nouveau-riche social climbers, reveling in the Custom of the Country.
    — Jennifer Leigh Parker, Forbes.com, 22 Aug. 2025
  • But what makes Lurker more than just the story of a dead-eyed social climber are the ways in which the movie suggests there’s something necessary and reciprocal about its dysfunctional central dynamic.
    — Alison Willmore, Vulture, 1 Dec. 2025
  • Rodolfo immediately dismisses Patrizia as a gold digger, a déclassé social climber who can’t tell a Picasso from a Klimt.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 23 Nov. 2021
  • Jenny is no cynical social climber—the connection is felt both ways; her devotion is genuine—but Hazzard cleverly paints her aspirations in terms of her surroundings.
    — Hillary Kelly, The New Republic, 4 Jan. 2023
  • The rituals associated with the horse race in Louisville — including sipping mint juleps while wearing opulent attire — are irresistible for many social climbers.
    — Bill Brownlee, Kansas City Star, 30 Jan. 2024
  • But Gatsby also comes to mind, as does Zelig, popping up in every corner of the culture; even Rastignac, the ceaseless social climber of several Balzac novels.
    — Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 19 July 2022
  • As Weisberg point out, it was written by Lord Chesterfield, a scheming social climber who never intended for his correspondences with his son Philip to be published.
    — Jackie Mansky, Smithsonian, 19 Apr. 2018
  • And with three skilled actresses at the film’s center, characters that could so easily be reduced to familiar stereotypes — the crazy one, the conniving one, the social climber — are instead imbued with humanity.
    — Alissa Wilkinson, Vox, 21 Nov. 2018
  • The sprawling period drama chronicles the great conflict between old money elites and new money social climbers in New York's glittering Gilded Age.
    — Shania Russell, EW.com, 12 Aug. 2024
  • Upon Ramona's return to the table, Sonja responds to the first conversation prompt, which sends her spiraling on a rant about how Ramona is a social climber with no authentic purpose.
    — Mary Sollosi, EW.com, 20 Aug. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'social climber.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: