Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the very rich, the social elite; thus pluty adj., wealthy and consciously elitist.

1894		Mirror of Life 29 Sept. 2/4: ’[T]here goes enother of the fellers that is livin’ off of us pore working men.’ ‘He don’t look like no plute’.
1907		N.Y. Tribune 24 Mar. 11: [story title] Shorty and the Plute by Sewell Ford.
1908		Colville Examiner (WA) 8 Feb. 5/2: The lordly city plutes have nothing to gain.
1908		S. Ford Side-Stepping with Shorty 13: Then we bumps up against a really truly plute, and gets a squint at his dinner check .
1911		S. Ford Torchy 53: One of them swell boardin’ schools, where they pump French and music into young lady plutesses.
1915		S. Ford Shorty McCabe on the Job (2007) 4: The long, thin nose gives him a pluty, distinguished look, in spite of the shifty eyes and the weak mouth lines. But I ain’t in a mood to be impressed.
1917		Truth (Wellington) 13 Oct. 1/7: Our Plute Parliamentarians [...] never tired of feeding their faces in Bellamy’s.
1917		(con. 1908) E. Lynn Adventures of a Woman Hobo 70: We’re the boys who’ll fix the machines, all right, all right. Yes, and the plutes, too.
1920		Ade Hand-made Fables 2: This Plute had a Country Place that was sufficiently near by.
1929		M. Levin Reporter 76: Brian Cassidy unpopped his fat bank roll [...] Oh, you County Board pluts!
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 345: Australia bein’ a workin’ man’s paradise, which is better than it bein’ a paradise for Plutes.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1964		(con. 1920s–40s) in J.L. Kornbluh Rebel Voices.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 85/2: pluty wealthy, but worse, perceived as assuming airs and graces above the level of the egalitarian Kiwi herd; refers also to suburbs that fancy themselves, such as Fendalton in Christchurch, Khandallah or Karori.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1907		Watchman & Southron (Sumter S.C.) 30 Oct. 20/3: All the Plute newspapers are asking you to [...] keep selling a bale of cotton at $60 and buying it back at $180. That’s the way to please the Privileged Few.
1915		S. Ford Torchy, Private Sec. 170: Here was Nutt Hamilton, a sporty young plute friend of Mr. Robert’s.