Definition of "Karen"

Left you a lover in that far land, / O Karen sad, that you pine so long! / Would I could unravel and understand / That sorrowful, sweet Norwegian song!

1878 Celia Thaxter, Drift-Weed, Houghton, Osgood,1878, page 28 ("Karen")

I was not called Karen after Hans Andersen's dancing girl, but after a Danish friend of my mother's who married an Englishman and was my godmother. So much for our family affairs.

1918 Cecily Ullman Sidgwick, Karen, W.Collins, 1918, page 12

“I pull out the dog treats I carry for just for such intransigence,” he wrote. “That’s when I started video recording with my iPhone, and when her inner Karen fully emerged and took a dark turn,” he said, using the name that has become slang for an entitled white woman.

2020 May 26, Sarah Maslin Nir, quoting Christian Cooper, “White Woman Is Fired After Calling Police on Black Man in Central Park”, in The New York Times‎

It was through that performance that Amy Cooper took on the mantle of an American archetype: the white woman who weaponizes her vulnerability to exact violence upon a Black man. […] In 2020, she is simply Karen.

2020 December 27, Julia Carrie Wong, “The year of Karen: how a meme changed the way Americans talked about racism”, in The Guardian‎

The organization wasn't meeting my needs, so I became a total Karen and asked to see the manager. He wasn't available so I took my business elsewhere.

2021 Adam Korson as Phil Orley in "Ft. Ghost Child", episode five of SurrealEstate

There are more than a hundred such groups, including the Karen of Thailand and Burma; the Kachin in Burma; the Akha, the Lahu, and the Lisu in Thailand; the Hmong, the Kmhmu, and the Yao in Laos; and the Nùng and the Lati in Vietnam.

2011, Terry Miller, Sean Williams, The Garland Handbook of Southeast Asian Music, page 303