Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
by 1911, perhaps 1909, from white (adj.) + collar (n.).\n\nThe white collar men are your clerks; they are your bookkeepers, your cashiers, your office men. We call them the 'white collar men' in order to distinguish them from the men who work with uniform and overalls and carry the dinner pails. The boys over on the West side got that name for them. It was supposed to be something a little better than they were.
[Malcolm McDowell, quoted in "Chicago Commerce," June 12, 1914]
\nWhite-collar crime attested by 1957 (there is a white-collar criminaloids from 1934).Wiktionary
a. 1 Of or pertaining to office work and workers; ''contrasted with'' blue-collar. 2 Pertaining to the culture of white-collar workers, ''as'' values, politics, etc.; ''contrasted with'' blue-collar.
WordNet
adj. of or designating salaried professional or clerical work or workers; "the coal miner's son aspired to a white-collar occupation as a bookkeeper" [ant: blue-collar]
Usage examples of "white-collar".
CD, with the drag queens, the talk shows only serve to heighten the ambivalence about cross-dressing: Is the true CD a stable, middle-aged, married white-collar worker or is he a flamboyant, effeminate homosexual who takes female hormones and has breast implants?
One consequence of this was a responsiveness to unionization among white-collar employees.
I knew how frustrated Dad was, for example, that some of the highest-profile white-collar perps remained unindicted years after their scandals erupted.
The suffocating stupidity of left-wing propaganda had frightened away whole classes of necessary people, factory managers, airmen, naval officers, farmers, white-collar workers, shopkeepers, policemen.
No, they were simply white-collar overachievers who worked hard and played harder.
Stood all I could of a two-bit, white-collar job before I organized the Barnstormers.
A third white-collar type, somewhat less simmering, came up to Disa, nodded acquiescently, hit the call bell, and signaled for an escort.
Many have quit their jobs to become manual laborers or taxi drivers, or to take other blue-collar work that pays much better than their former white-collar jobs.
But the downside was Schwinn had no attention span for white-collar work, couldn’.
Analogously, the major portion of the brain is engaged in what we might call white-collar work, and if this is considered as representing brain use, as it certainly should be, theo the human being uses all his brain.
Smithback could hear a low undercurrent of sound: worried muttering from the older, elegantly dressed people, scoffs and hoots of derision from the young white-collar turks and desk jockeys.
Several steel and auto plants had shut down, and two major banks failed, throwing thousands of white-collar workers out of jobs and causing downturns in real-estate, advertising, law and other fields.
They had become a byword for blue and white-collar workers everywhere as a job description.
In fact, his own years in the corporate world convinced him that many of the white-collar spies were driven to it because of the financial pressures of maintaining a social front equal to or better than their job rating.
They jarred with the white-collar businessman image, for they were callused and scratchedthe hands of a manual laborer.