bour·geois
ˈbu̇rzh-ˌwä,
also ˈbu̇zh-,
or ˈbüzh-,
or
bu̇rzh-ˈwä
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
ˈbu̇rzh-ˌwä,
also ˈbu̇zh-,
or ˈbüzh-,
or
bu̇rzh-ˈwä
plural bourgeois
ˈbu̇rzh-ˌwä(z),
also ˈbu̇zh-,
or ˈbüzh-,
or
bu̇rzh-ˈwä(z)
1
a
: a middle-class person
b
: burgher
2
: a person with social behavior and political views held to be influenced by private-property interest : capitalist
3
plural
: bourgeoisie
Example Sentences
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, 1975
Noun
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, 1990
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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
Noun
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, 1990
See More
Recent Examples on the WebDevon Ivie, Vulture, 9 June 2023
The Paper Palace has long since been sold (and reclad in bourgeois shingles).
—Penelope Green, New York Times, 13 Aug. 2022
Nestled on an unusually quiet street at the foot of SoPi, or South Pigalle, the historically seedy red-light district that has become more and more bobo, or bourgeois boheme in recent years, the hotel is a short walk from dozens of bars and restaurants that serve sinfully delicious Parisian fare.
—Caitlin Raux Gunther, Travel + Leisure, 12 Oct. 2021
The apartment had started life as horse stables in the 1870s, servicing a much larger bourgeois house adjacent to it.
—Olivia Gregory, ELLE Decor, 24 May 2023
The Industrial Revolution brought about the dawn of modernism; the Russian Revolution initially saw the demise of bourgeois opulence in favor of Constructivism.
—Cheri Lucas Rowlands, Longreads, 9 May 2023
His penchant for the suit reveals the heart of a bourgeois technocrat whose proximity to the Sun King perhaps comes from schoolboy imaginings, lofty ambitions, and a certain inflexibility of temperament.
—Hazlitt, 12 May 2022
Christianity is a firmly bourgeois sect in Taiwan and Singapore.
—Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 10 Aug. 2012
Tradwives forsake life in society for the lonely, constrictive refuge of bourgeois home ownership, and in doing so acquiesce to our collective neglect of the public sphere.
—Lisa Wells, Harper’s Magazine , 15 Mar. 2023
Joanna Biggs, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
In the turn-of-the-20th-century scenes, set designer Richard Hudson creates the sort of luxe environment that envelops the family persuasively in a false sense of permanent security, and costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel dresses the ensemble in warmly appealing bourgeois finery.
—Peter Marks, Washington Post, 3 Oct. 2022
The villains in The White Lotus, wealthy vacationers who travel en famille to exotic hotels in Hawaii and Sicily, represent the selfish, bourgeois, unhip, and invariably white middle class — cross-generational stereotypes that trigger guilt in conservative viewers.
—Armond White, National Review, 10 Feb. 2023
There was some boundary-pushing in these moments—the choice of an artistic life over a traditional one; the premium on a younger generation’s perspective—that has been, over the years, habituated and commercialized into something regular, even bourgeois.
—Meredith Haggerty, Town & Country, 20 Jan. 2022
In tandem with running the resort, the management is taking the Farm’s haute-bourgeois aesthetic—along with the earthier but no less upscale vibe of its newest development, Blackberry Mountain—and translated it to in-house interior design and real estate divisions.
—Libby Callaway, Condé Nast Traveler, 25 June 2021
Next a section of haute bourgeois florals in pleated silk and leather, sleeves skimming down almost to the floor, shoulders rounded in a permanent, slightly tense, little shrug.
—Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 6 Mar. 2023
But the fact of black success is already established by Adonis’s bourgeois status — living with his wife and daughter in an awesome mansion, plus his post-boxing entrepreneurship as the owner of a community gym.
—Armond White, National Review, 3 Mar. 2023
Between them, these works consumed perhaps a year of Vermeer’s labor—a scrupulous rendering of bourgeois appurtenances and a faithful imagining of internal lives, which might better be described as an act of devotion.
—Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 20 Feb. 2023
See More
Adjective
Jamie Lloyd’s approach is just too reduced given that A Doll’s House is about the bourgeois middle class and keeping up appearances.
—Devon Ivie, Vulture, 9 June 2023
The Paper Palace has long since been sold (and reclad in bourgeois shingles).
—Penelope Green, New York Times, 13 Aug. 2022
Nestled on an unusually quiet street at the foot of SoPi, or South Pigalle, the historically seedy red-light district that has become more and more bobo, or bourgeois boheme in recent years, the hotel is a short walk from dozens of bars and restaurants that serve sinfully delicious Parisian fare.
—Caitlin Raux Gunther, Travel + Leisure, 12 Oct. 2021
The apartment had started life as horse stables in the 1870s, servicing a much larger bourgeois house adjacent to it.
—Olivia Gregory, ELLE Decor, 24 May 2023
The Industrial Revolution brought about the dawn of modernism; the Russian Revolution initially saw the demise of bourgeois opulence in favor of Constructivism.
—Cheri Lucas Rowlands, Longreads, 9 May 2023
His penchant for the suit reveals the heart of a bourgeois technocrat whose proximity to the Sun King perhaps comes from schoolboy imaginings, lofty ambitions, and a certain inflexibility of temperament.
—Hazlitt, 12 May 2022
Christianity is a firmly bourgeois sect in Taiwan and Singapore.
—Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 10 Aug. 2012
Tradwives forsake life in society for the lonely, constrictive refuge of bourgeois home ownership, and in doing so acquiesce to our collective neglect of the public sphere.
—Lisa Wells, Harper’s Magazine , 15 Mar. 2023
Noun
Heiners explodes, attempting to discredit Elisabeth by calling her a low-life bourgeois whose father was a journalist under Hitler.
—Joanna Biggs, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
In the turn-of-the-20th-century scenes, set designer Richard Hudson creates the sort of luxe environment that envelops the family persuasively in a false sense of permanent security, and costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel dresses the ensemble in warmly appealing bourgeois finery.
—Peter Marks, Washington Post, 3 Oct. 2022
The villains in The White Lotus, wealthy vacationers who travel en famille to exotic hotels in Hawaii and Sicily, represent the selfish, bourgeois, unhip, and invariably white middle class — cross-generational stereotypes that trigger guilt in conservative viewers.
—Armond White, National Review, 10 Feb. 2023
There was some boundary-pushing in these moments—the choice of an artistic life over a traditional one; the premium on a younger generation’s perspective—that has been, over the years, habituated and commercialized into something regular, even bourgeois.
—Meredith Haggerty, Town & Country, 20 Jan. 2022
In tandem with running the resort, the management is taking the Farm’s haute-bourgeois aesthetic—along with the earthier but no less upscale vibe of its newest development, Blackberry Mountain—and translated it to in-house interior design and real estate divisions.
—Libby Callaway, Condé Nast Traveler, 25 June 2021
Next a section of haute bourgeois florals in pleated silk and leather, sleeves skimming down almost to the floor, shoulders rounded in a permanent, slightly tense, little shrug.
—Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 6 Mar. 2023
But the fact of black success is already established by Adonis’s bourgeois status — living with his wife and daughter in an awesome mansion, plus his post-boxing entrepreneurship as the owner of a community gym.
—Armond White, National Review, 3 Mar. 2023
Between them, these works consumed perhaps a year of Vermeer’s labor—a scrupulous rendering of bourgeois appurtenances and a faithful imagining of internal lives, which might better be described as an act of devotion.
—Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 20 Feb. 2023
See More
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bourgeois.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Phrases Containing bourgeois
Dictionary Entries Near bourgeois
Cite this Entry
“Bourgeois.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bourgeois. Accessed 20 Jun. 2023.
Copy Citation
Kids Definition
bourgeois
1 of 2 adjective
bour·geois
ˈbu̇(ə)rzh-ˌwä
bu̇rzh-ˈwä
1
: of or relating to townspeople or members of the middle class
2
: marked by a concern for comfort, wealth, and what is respectable
bourgeois
2 of 2 noun
plural bourgeois
-ˌwä(z),
-ˈwä(z)
: a person of the middle class of society
Etymology
Noun
from early French bourgeois "a resident of a town," from earlier burgeis (same meaning), from burc "town," from Latin burgus "fortified place" — related to burgess
Biographical Definition
Bourgeois 1 of 2
biographical name (1)
Bour·geois
bu̇rzh-ˈwä
ˈbu̇rzh-ˌwä
Léon-Victor-Auguste 1851–1925 French statesman
Bourgeois
2 of 2biographical name (2)
Louise 1911–2010 American (French-born) sculptor
More from Merriam-Webster on bourgeois
Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for bourgeois
Nglish: Translation of bourgeois for Spanish Speakers
Britannica English: Translation of bourgeois for Arabic Speakers
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