There are brand names and titles that enter the language because of their ability to define an entity or action completely: bandaid, kleenex, and google come to mind. The dictionary defines a “babbitt” as a “person and especially a business or professional man who conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards”.  The word comes from the title character in the controversial 1922 bestseller Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis that satirized the middle-class conformity and boosterism of American society in the years following the First World War. George Babbitt is a realtor in the fictional mid-sized industrial city of Zenith in the Midwestern state of Winnemac, next to Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois.  The 1930 Nobel Prize committee described Babbitt as "the ideal of an American popular hero of the middle-class. The relativity of business morals as well as private rules of conduct is for him an accepted article of faith, and without hesitation he considers it God's purpose that man should work, increase his income, and enjoy modern improvements."  The book does not have a plot in the conventional sense. Instead it is simply a chronological sequence of scenes that unfold over a two year period during which the solid citizen and Booster club member becomes disillusioned by unexpected events, attempts to find meaning in unconventional and rebellious behavior, but returns to the fold when he faces ostracism and his wife becomes ill. He gives in but never completely forgets the unrealized dreams.

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