bourgeois
1bour·geois
adj\ˈbu̇rzh-ˌwä also ˈbu̇zh- or ˈbüzh- or bu̇rzh-ˈ\
Definition of BOURGEOIS
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
— bour·geois·ifi·ca·tion \ˌbu̇(r)zh-ˌwä-zə-fə-ˈkā-shən\ noun
— bour·geois·ify \bu̇(r)zh-ˈwä-zə-ˌfī\ verb
See Examples of BOURGEOIS
- 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, 1975
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Origin of BOURGEOIS
Middle French, from Old French burgeis townsman, from burc, borg town, from Latin burgus
First Known Use: circa 1565
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