Imeldific UP221
Imelda Romualdez Marcos is a Filipino politician and convicted criminal who was First Lady of the Philippines for 21 years, during which she and her husband stole billions from the Filipino people, amassing a personal fortune estimated to have been worth US$5 billion to 10 billion by the time they were deposed in 1986. By 2018, about $3.6 billion of this had been recovered by the Philippine government, either through compromise deals or sequestration cases.
She and her family gained notoriety for living a lavish lifestyle during a period of economic crisis and civil unrest in the country. She spent much of her time abroad on state visits, extravagant parties, and shopping sprees, and spent much of the State's money on her personal art, jewelry and shoe collections. She and her husband Ferdinand hold the Guinness World Record for the Greatest Robbery of a Government. The subject of dozens of court cases around the world, she was eventually convicted of corruption charges for her activities during her term as governor of Metro Manila in 2018; the case is under appeal.
The late 1980s, the revelation that Imelda Marcos had "amassed a huge collection of art, jewellery, property and – most famously – at least 1,000 pairs of shoes", had turned her into a household name, frequently compared to Marie Antoinette of France, except "with shoes". This led to the coining of the Philippine English adjective "Imeldific", to describe "anything exaggeratedly ostentatious or in bad taste", referring to clothing, architecture, décor, etc.
It also refers to people who have "the Imelda Marcos syndrome" – tending to be extravagant and not being afraid to flaunt it, or to describe a lifestyle of "ostentatious extravagance".
It has also come to be used in International English, with dictionary writer and Atlantic columnist Anne Soukhanov expounding on the "ostentatious extravagance" etymology. In popular international media, the Sydney Morning Herald's Jackie Dent sums up the meaning of the word simply by saying it "means to be ... well, like Imelda."
She and her family gained notoriety for living a lavish lifestyle during a period of economic crisis and civil unrest in the country. She spent much of her time abroad on state visits, extravagant parties, and shopping sprees, and spent much of the State's money on her personal art, jewelry and shoe collections. She and her husband Ferdinand hold the Guinness World Record for the Greatest Robbery of a Government. The subject of dozens of court cases around the world, she was eventually convicted of corruption charges for her activities during her term as governor of Metro Manila in 2018; the case is under appeal.
The late 1980s, the revelation that Imelda Marcos had "amassed a huge collection of art, jewellery, property and – most famously – at least 1,000 pairs of shoes", had turned her into a household name, frequently compared to Marie Antoinette of France, except "with shoes". This led to the coining of the Philippine English adjective "Imeldific", to describe "anything exaggeratedly ostentatious or in bad taste", referring to clothing, architecture, décor, etc.
It also refers to people who have "the Imelda Marcos syndrome" – tending to be extravagant and not being afraid to flaunt it, or to describe a lifestyle of "ostentatious extravagance".
It has also come to be used in International English, with dictionary writer and Atlantic columnist Anne Soukhanov expounding on the "ostentatious extravagance" etymology. In popular international media, the Sydney Morning Herald's Jackie Dent sums up the meaning of the word simply by saying it "means to be ... well, like Imelda."
