I'm looking for a single word meaning "clique member." Since "clique" is pejorative, this term or inflection would be pejorative as well, likely used by outsiders though not necessarily.
I've checked Wiktionary for clique. My best attempts:
- Clique Member - I find it dry and cumbersome, though "member" is reliable for this type of inflection.
- Cliquemate - This is pretty good.
- Cliquey - It's adjective but I might use as nonstandard noun, with -ys as the plural. It sounds right to me, regardless of existence of adjective. Has anyone heard this usage as countable noun? When adjectives are used as noun ("the elderly") I believe those are uncountable nouns. I never hear "the elderlys (-ies)". Britannica says adjective as noun is preceded with "the". There's words that double as adjective and countable noun but I consider that a special case, eg "savage(s)".
- Cliquer - Clique is verb, eg "clique up". One who cliques. I can't find this -er usage in web search.
- Cliquey ___ [element, person] - This is my second favorite solution after Cliquey (as noun).
My example sentence is
This place is overrun by ____ [cliqueys]!
I'm in USA but I don't mind British-oriented answers.