Parvenu:
one that has recently or suddenly risen to an unaccustomed position of wealth or power and has not yet gained the prestige, dignity, or manner associated with it [Merriam-Webster]
Compare to parvenue. Noted in “The Tao Of Marty,” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish:
And I have to say I was a little nervous about his new memoir, The Controversialist: Arguments with Everyone, Left Right and Center, as anyone who knows they’ll be written about in someone’s memoir might be, but I soon forgot about that as I started reading. The story is a deeply, fascinatingly American one. A parvenu, Brooklyn-born, Brandeis-educated Jew who became a “Harvard patriot” in his words, Marty bought The New Republic in 1974, and he turned it, for three decades, into essential reading.
