bourgeois
adjective
bour·geois
| \ ˈbu̇rzh-ˌwä also ˈbu̇zh- or ˈbüzh- or bu̇rzh-ˈwä
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\
Definition of bourgeois
(Entry 1 of 4)
1
: of, relating to, or characteristic of the social middle class
2
: marked by a concern for material interests and respectability and a tendency toward mediocrity
3
: dominated by commercial and industrial interests : capitalistic
bourgeois
noun
bour·geois
| \ ˈbu̇rzh-ˌwä also ˈbu̇zh- or ˈbüzh- or bu̇rzh-ˈwä
\
\
plural bourgeois\ ˈbu̇rzh-ˌwä(z) also ˈbu̇zh- or ˈbüzh- or bu̇rzh-ˈwä(z)
\
\
Definition of bourgeois (Entry 2 of 4)
1a
: a middle-class person
b
: burgher
2
: a person with social behavior and political views held to be influenced by private-property interest : capitalist
Bourgeois
biographical name (1)
Bour·geois
| \ bu̇rzh-ˈwä
, ˈbu̇rzh-ˌwä\
, ˈbu̇rzh-ˌwä\
Definition of Bourgeois (Entry 3 of 4)
Léon-Victor-Auguste 1851–1925 French statesman
Bourgeois
biographical name (2)Definition of Bourgeois (Entry 4 of 4)
Louise 1911–2010 American (French-born) sculptor
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Other Words from bourgeois
Adjective
bourgeoisification
\ ˌbu̇(r)zh-ˌwä-zə-fə-ˈkā-shən
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noun
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noun
bourgeoisify
\ bu̇(r)zh-ˈwä-zə-ˌfī
\
verb
\
verb
Examples of bourgeois in a Sentence
Adjective
Indignation about the powers that be and the bourgeois fools who did their bidding—that was all you needed … You were an intellectual. — Tom Wolfe, Harper's, June 2000 Even before the 19th century was over, successive waves of collection mania had rolled across Europe and America, submerging country homes and bourgeois town houses in ferns and faux-Grecian ruins … — Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review, 7 Feb. 1999 Or is Sartre's existentialism to be understood as only a way station in his transit from a bourgeois intellectual to a Marxist ideologue? — Walker Percy, "The State of the Novel," 1977, in Signposts in a Strange Land, 1991 … the United States … was the bourgeois nation par excellence, in which, it might be said, the values of trade were transmogrified into ideals of freedom. — Robert Penn Warren, Democracy and Poetry, 1975Noun
For many, Nietzsche has always been a bugaboo, though some regard him as an heroic destroyer of idols, the invigorating voice of skepticism, and a revealer of those embarrassing actualities that the pieties and protestations of the bourgeois have customarily concealed. — William H. Gass, Harper's, August 2005 With exceptions like Rousseau, the philosophes were elitists. They enlightened through noblesse oblige in company with noblemen, and often with a patronizing attitude toward the bourgeois as well as the common people. — Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette, 1990Recent Examples on the Web: Adjective
The latest bourgeois fashions, with their crisp tailoring and functional simplicity, may not be any more affordable than the Vuitton sneakers that provoked the ire of the gilets jaunes. — Jeffrey Westbrook. Styled By Will Kahn, Town & Country, "Bourgeouis? Moi? This Season Is Fashion's Rich Girl Revenge," 22 Aug. 2019 The satire of bourgeois affluence can seem glib and overextended. — Ben Brantley, New York Times, "Review: ‘Is God Is’ Reinvents the Good, the Bad and the Ugly," 18 Feb. 2018 In a series of paintings on canvas from these years, bourgeois couples conduct clandestine affairs amid sparse, pastel-toned interiors. — Samuel Reilly, 1843, "Enigmatic and erotic: the art of Félix Vallotton," 3 July 2019 Slimane supplanted the tepidly pretty, bourgeois style of the house’s previous designer, Stefano Pilati, with a rock-and-roll spirit more appropriate for Hollywood Boulevard than Paris’s rue de Grenelle. — Alexandra Marshall, WSJ, "Exclusive: Step Inside YSL’s New Parisian Headquarters," 15 Feb. 2019 Any hint of style or glamour denoted bourgeois aspirations, which were loudly denounced in a society focused on industrialization and agriculture. — Niree Noel, Allure, "The Evolution of Armenia’s Beauty Industry, According to Women Who Witnessed It," 27 July 2018 Indeed, for a sizable contingent of Americans, the pickup truck has emerged as a means of establishing their ties to a distinctly blue-collar identity in the course of flaunting their bourgeois prosperity. — James C. Cobb, Smithsonian, "The Pickup Truck’s Transformation From Humble Workhorse to Fancy Toy," 3 July 2018 Like much of both artists’ recent work, the album makes liberal use of liberation aesthetics, often juxtaposed directly with riffs on bourgeois pursuits. — Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, "Do Beyoncé Fans Have to Forgive Jay-Z?," 18 June 2018 The film follows a bourgeois family on a ski trip in the alps, only for a single moment of telling cowardice from the father to send the entire unit into a spiral of doubt, passive-aggression, and shame. — Tom Philip, GQ, "Hulu Might Be the Best Movie Streaming Website," 3 May 2018Recent Examples on the Web: Noun
Once shunned by the revolutionary government as bourgeois, tourism has become one of Cuba’s most important generators of foreign exchange since the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of its subsidies to Cuba. — Mimi Whitefield, Los Angeles Times, "Cuba feels the pinch of the Trump administration’s travel restrictions," 11 Aug. 2019 The subject is a classic example of a mid-19th-century bourgeois Parisienne; her glance is either a smile or a judgment. — James Mcauley, Town & Country, "The Haunting of Paris: Georges Mandel and the Long Legacy of Nazi Violence," 6 Aug. 2019 As two bourgeois who had decided to disavow their social origins, Sartre and Beauvoir understood the bourgeoisie’s violence against them, but they were deeply hurt by the Communists’ reaction. — Longreads, "When Sartre and Beauvoir Started a Magazine," 10 Apr. 2018 There were bourgeois city dwellers and poor farmers, Communists and non-Communists, reactionaries, Old Bolsheviks, internationalist Comintern officials; fur coats, pianos, subways, airplanes; careerism, backbiting, and ambition. — Aaron Lake Smith, Harper's magazine, "The Trials of Vasily Grossman," 24 June 2019 Celine’s Hedi Slimane surprised just about everyone with his reappraisal of the label’s ’70s and ’80s haute bourgeois uniform. — Nicole Phelps, Vogue, "The Top 12 Shows of Paris Fashion Week Fall 2019," 6 Mar. 2019 While Burberry, Balmain, and Tom Ford all embraced the muted shade with classic bourgeois stylings on the runways, Bieber’s take on the look was more casual and streetwise in attitude. — Edward Barsamian, Vogue, "Hailey Bieber Steps Out In Fashion’s Coolest New Neutral Shade," 19 Nov. 2018 Those three presidents had been raised in the ideals of bourgeois knightliness. — Lance Morrow, WSJ, "Did Chivalry Go Down With the Titanic?," 14 Dec. 2018 Members of the rich elite are referred to as fifis, the equivalent of bourgeois. — New York Times, "The Firebrand Leftist Far Ahead in Mexico’s Presidential Polls," 29 June 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'bourgeois.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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