bourgeoisn.1adj.
/ˈbʊəʒwɑː/, /bʊəˈʒwɑː/, /ˈbɔːʒwɑː/, /bɔːˈʒwɑː/, U.S. /bʊrˈʒwɑ/, /ˈbʊrʒwɑ/ A. n.1
1.
a. Originally: a citizen or freeman of a town or borough in France (or occasionally in other foreign countries), as distinct from a peasant or gentleman (used as a foreign equivalent of burgess or burgher, esp. in translations of foreign texts). Later more generally: a member of the (usually urban) middle class of any country, sometimes spec. of the mercantile or shopkeeping middle class (but cf. petit bourgeois n.). In later use frequently with some implication of the values, outlook, etc., considered characteristic of the middle class; cf. sense B. 2.
ΘΚΠ
society > inhabiting and dwelling > inhabitant > inhabitant according to environment > town- or city-dweller > [noun] > esp. as having civic rights
burgess?c1225
citizena1325
commoner1384
citinerc1450
in-burgess1479
burgher?1555
bourgeoisie1593
bourgeois1604
burgessdom1661
society > society and the community > social class > the common people > specific classes of common people > [noun] > middle class or bourgeoisie > person
bourgeois1704
gigman1830
haut bourgeois1846
petit bourgeois1851
petty bourgeois1871
middle-classer1886
middle-middle1926
Middletowner1937
middle1955
bourgie1966
the mind > attention and judgement > bad taste > [noun] > philistinism > Philistine
Goth1663
Saracen1723
Visigoth1749
barbarian1757
Philistine1825
Babbitt1921
no-brow1926
bourgeois1930
1604 E. Grimeston tr. J. de Acosta Nat. & Morall Hist. Indies iv. vi. 223 Many Spaniardes, and the most parte of the Bourgeois [Sp. los vezinos] of the silver Cittie, which is eighteene leagues from Potozi [in Peru], came thither to take mines.
1606 R. Knolles tr. J. Bodin Six Bks. Common-weale ii. vi. 233 They proceed to the choice..of a citizen, or at least wise of a Burgeois [Fr. bourgeois], to put into the great counsell [at Geneva].
1663 F. Philipps Antiq. Præ-emption & Pourveyance for King viii. 464 Many Arbitrary Taxes and Assessements..much the more burdensome to the pesants Bourgeois and Artizans [of France], or a third or lower estate of the people.
1678 M. Nedham Christianissimus Christianandus iv. 65 Whoever among the Bourgeois, the Tradesmen, or the Peasants [of France], do get either Lands or Pence, their King, as oft as he pleases, demands three parts in four.
1704 Clarendon's Hist. Rebellion III. xii. 241 He [sc. the exiled Duke of Lorraine in Bruxelles] liv'd in a jolly familiarity with the Bourgeois and their Wives.
1716 D. Manley Secret Mem. (new ed.) II. i. 30 Not [to] dishonour my Family, which a Marriage with the Daughter of a Bourgoise [1720 (ed. 6) Bourgeois] would consequently have done.
1766 T. Smollett Trav. France & Italy I. v. 67 The bourgeois of Boulogne have commonly..a roast, with a sallad, for supper.
a1777 S. Foote Trip to Calais (1778) iii. 81 Matt Minnikin..an honest burgoise,..won't set fire to the Thames, though he lives near the Bridge.
1801 H. M. Williams Sketches Manners French Republic II. xxxi. 130 This fine garden..had been the promenade of the mere bourgeois, of children, and nursery maids.
1827 London Mag. Aug. 467 One of the worthy bourgeois of Chester.
1853 G. L. Chesterton Peace, War, & Adventure I. v. 75 A well-dressed Spanish bourgeois stealthily advanced, and..asked me if I could sell him a few barrels of powder.
1899 Sat. Rev. 25 Nov. 669/1 The habits and manners of the German bourgeois who travels have left much to be desired.
1911 J. Conrad Let. 7 Mar. (1956) 225 You may look upon me as the stodgiest ‘bourgeois’ in the stalls.
1930 A. Huxley Brief Candles 190 It's better to be a good ordinary bourgeois than a bad ordinary bohemian..or a second-rate intellectual.
1966 V. Nabokov Speak, Memory (U.S. rev. ed.) xiii. 263 This astute politician had about as much taste and interest in aesthetic matters as an ordinary Russian bourgeois of the Flaubertian épicier sort.
1997 Daily Tel. 7 Aug. 14/4 Nick Hornby..has demonstrated that football is a form of collective yobbery which appeals just as much to the bourgeois as to the working class.
2006 C. Lang Maxim Gorky iii. 110 Melodrama is..used to manipulate audience perception of the characters: the bourgeois are cast as villains, the rest become their victims.
b. Chiefly in Marxist theory: a person who upholds the interests of capitalism, or who is considered to be an exploiter of the proletariat, typically through ownership of the means of production.
ΘΚΠ
society > society and the community > social class > the common people > specific classes of common people > [noun] > capitalist class > member of
bourgeois1850
1850 H. Macfarlane tr. K. Marx & F. Engels Manifesto Communist Party in Red Republican 9 Nov. 161/2 Bourgeois and Proletarians. Hitherto the history of society has been the history of the battles between the classes composing it.
1866 Commonwealth (London) 20 Oct. 1/6 Bourgeois and proletarian, tired the one of killing, the other of being killed, threw themselves desperately into the arms of Bonaparte.
1883 F. Harrison in Pall Mall Gaz. 28 Sept. 2/1 The logical communists..bitterly complain of nationalization of the land as a device of the bourgeois to save the nationalization of capital.
1886 F. K. Wischnewetzky tr. F. Engels Condit. Working-class (1892) 277 It is utterly indifferent to the English bourgeois whether his working-men starve or not, if only he makes money.
1946 Life 15 July 49/3 The Red Army..were sure that the bourgeois dwelt in them and were all set for little sprees of shooting and looting.
1962 Mod. Lang. Rev. 57 70 The much vaunted July Revolution had merely meant the triumph of the bourgeois.
2010 P. A. Erickson & L. D. Murphy Readings Hist. Anthropol. Theory (ed. 3) i. 11/2 By forcing workers to work for money, the bourgeois transformed workers into commodities.
2. North American. A person in charge of a team of trappers or hunters, an expedition, etc.; a leader, a boss. Also: a person holding a position of seniority in a fur trading company or trading post. Now historical.
ΚΠ
1791 J. Long Voy. Indian Interpreter 106 Where great exertion is necessary, all distinction is laid aside, and it is tel maitre, tel valet, the bourgeois must work as hard as the engagés.
1793 J. MacDonell Diary 15 Aug. in C. M. Gates Five Fur Traders (1933) 101 Our Bourgeois came up with us and ordered each man a dram.
1837 N.Y. Mirror 8 July 11/1 Our brigade consisted of two canoes, manned by seventeen Canadians, voyageurs..and Donald McKenie, bourgeois, or proprietor, who had charge of the whole.
1857 J. Hector Jrnl. 31 Oct. in J. Palliser Jrnls., Rep. & Observ. Explorations Brit. N. Amer. (1863) 131 in Parl. Papers XXXIX. 441 Chief factor Christie.., being the bourgeois of the whole district, of course had two of the best men he could get.
1903 H. M. Chittenden Hist. Early Steamboat Navigation Missouri River I. iii. 23 The bourgeois of the different [trading] posts..came down to the boat when it arrived, looked over the new engagés, and selected such as they thought would suit them.
1961 M. H. Brown Plainsmen of Yellowstone (1969) ii. 37 As the four swapped stories, Manuel Lisa, the bourgeois of this party, must have hovered near.
2011 A. F. Hyde Empires, Nations, & Families v. 320 By 1849 he served as chief trader (or bourgeois) at Fort Union.
B. adj.
1. That is a bourgeois (sense A. 1a); of, relating to, or belonging to the middle class (originally of France).
ΘΚΠ
society > society and the community > social class > the common people > specific classes of common people > [adjective] > middle-class or bourgeois
moyen1481
middling1631
bourgeois1761
small bourgeois1832
lower middle class1835
middle class1836
bourgeoisistic1848
petty bourgeois1864
upper middle class1872
petit bourgeois1887
lace curtain1928
haut bourgeois1940
bourgie1968
1761 Gentleman's Mag. June 270/1 M. Sarignon, clerk of the treasury of the French troops, the armourer, the Bourgeois cannoneers, the storekeepers, and all the workmen belonging to the engineers, may remain at Bellisle with their families.
1789 A. Young Jrnl. 30 July in Trav. France (1792) i. 149 Two bourgeois musketeers conducted me to the hotel de ville.
1806 tr. in La Belle Assemblée Dec. 579/1 La Jeunesse, a native of Bourdeaux, was of a good Bourgeois family.
1834 J. H. Mancur Henri Quatre I. 76 Une famille de robe, as the descendants of a bourgeois lawyer were called.
1872 J. Morley Voltaire vii. 314 Born to be the insipid gossip of a bourgeois circle.
1906 19th Cent. & After Oct. 655 The bourgeois family, the Heineckes, consists of a father, mother, and two daughters, one of whom is unmarried and beautiful.
1949 Life 19 Sept. 127/1 He spent most of his life in solid and prosperous bourgeois surroundings.
1976 E. Weber Peasants into Frenchmen 160 Imitation of bourgeois building styles..and of railway architecture,..altered the looks of many a bourgade, then of the countryside as well.
2002 Guardian 11 Oct. ii. 5/5 The last vestige of my working-class roots, poking through my bourgeois topsoil.
2. Resembling or characteristic of the middle class in appearance, way of thinking, etc.; esp. with disparaging implication, in later use often with reference to the attribution to this class of such qualities as selfish materialism, conventional respectability, and lack of imagination (see also quot. 1960). Cf. middle class adj. 2.In later disparaging use sometimes with admixture of sense B. 4.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > attention and judgement > bad taste > [adjective] > Philistine
unseasoned1598
Gothish1602
Gothic1695
Vandal1752
beauty-proof1753
bourgeois1764
Philistine1831
palateless1860
philistinic1869
Philistinish1871
Babbitty1925
society > society and the community > social class > the common people > specific classes of common people > [adjective] > middle-class or bourgeois > characteristic of
bourgeois1764
middle class1846
chintzy1851
middle-classy1926
gin and Jag1963
white bread1977
1764 S. Foote Lyar i. ii. 11 Decency is..a mere bourgois plebeian quality.
1775 H. Walpole Let. 10 Aug. (1904) IX. 231 Consider how bourgeois it would be in me to talk of her Highness my niece.
1840 W. M. Thackeray Paris Sketch Bk. I. 189 A regular bourgeois physiognomy.
1873 J. A. Symonds Stud. Greek Poets iii. 80 He is thoroughly bourgeois, to use a modern phrase.
1895 ‘H. S. Merriman’ Sowers (1899) xvi. 141 ‘I am only asking a proof that you care for me.’ Etta gave a little laugh... ‘A proof! But that is so bourgeois and unnecessary. Haven't you proof enough, since I am your wife?’
1913 F. Delius Let. 13 Feb. in B. Smith F. Delius & P. Warlock (2000) 81 There is more musical atmosphere there [sc. Germany] & England is so Bourgeois & matter of fact.
1949 F. Maclean Eastern Approaches i. iii. 32 Up to a year or two before [1937] jazz, or ‘dzhaz’, as it was called, had been frowned on [in Russia] as bourgeois stuff.
1960 C. S. Lewis Stud. in Words i. 21 When I was a boy..bourgeois meant ‘not aristocratic, therefore vulgar’. When I was in my twenties this changed... Bourgeois began to mean ‘not proletarian, therefore parasitic, reactionary’.
1988 F. Kermode in D. Walder Lit. in Mod. World (1990) 20 Benjamin approved of Proust, with his sense of..‘the incalculable individual life’ (a rather bourgeois expression, surely).
2011 Independent 12 May (Viewspaper section) 7/1 [They] were far too clever to care about such bourgeois considerations as the cleanliness and general aesthetics of their workplace.
3. Of French wine: next in quality to wines made from classified growths or crus.
ΘΚΠ
the world > food and drink > drink > intoxicating liquor > wine > class or grade of wine > [adjective] > second class
bourgeois1846
1846 C. Cocks Bordeaux ii. 191 At Lamarque the first bourgeois wines sell, in good years, at 24l.
1888 Sat. Rev. 10 Mar. 290/2 A respectable bourgeois claret must figure under the name of some château, although the real château wine of the same vintage may be an inferior article.
1908 E. Vizetelly & A. Vizetelly Wines of France iii. 93 A superior bourgeois Médoc of 1904.
1967 C. Ray Compleat Imbiber IX. 66 Some lesser classed growths, both great and bourgeois.
2002 M. Broadbent Michael Broadbent's Vintage Wine 162/1 Good fruit, and with the length so often lacking in bourgeois Médocs.
4. Chiefly in Marxist theory: that is a bourgeois (sense A. 1b); that upholds the interests of capitalism, or exploits the proletariat; associated with or characteristic of this class of people (sometimes used more vaguely as a term of abuse).
ΘΚΠ
society > authority > rule or government > politics > political philosophy > specific political theories or doctrines > [adjective] > capitalism
bourgeois1850
1850 Democratic Rev. Apr. 432 The French proletarians..could destroy not a single atom of the existing bourgeois institutions, until the march of the revolution had [etc.].
1886 J. L. Joynes tr. K. Marx Wage-labour & Capital 11 Increase of capital..cannot abolish the opposition between his [sc. the labourer's] interests and those of the bourgeois or capitalist class.
1902 Rev. of Reviews Apr. 419/2 Does Mr. Stead consider the English Crown capable of submitting itself to the bourgeois hegemony which governs the White House?
1928 G. B. Shaw Intell. Woman's Guide Socialism lxxiv. 369 When the Russian Communist and his western imitators speak of the proprietors and their political supporters as ‘bourgeois’.
1932 R. H. B. Lockhart Mem. Brit. Agent 230 Your Government is working for Japanese intervention in Siberia. Your other missions here [sc. in Russia] are plotting against us with all the bourgeois scum.
1946 A. Koestler Thieves in Night 90 Powder and cosmetics are banned from our stores as attributes of ‘bourgeois decay’.
1967 N. Podhoretz Making It ii. lv. 118 As good Marxists, they regarded Zionism as yet another form of bourgeois nationalism.
1976 T. Eagleton Crit. & Ideol. i. 25 Both Romantic and labourist ideologies are in partial conflict with bourgeois hegemony.
2005 C. Stross Accelerando ii. 65 The central committee denounced computers as bourgeois deviationist pseudoscience intended to dehumanize the proletarian.
Phrases
to shock the bourgeois: = épater les bourgeois at épater v.
ΚΠ
1874 Athenæum 23 May 698/3 These precocious roués, these innocent débauchés, these drinkers in imagination, who shock the bourgeois by a thousand Platonic abominations.
1905 Times 14 Oct. 7/3 If in telling the truth we succeed also in shocking the bourgeois, why, so much the better!
1960 C. P. Snow Affair v. 49 It was mildly ironic, when one thought how, as a young woman, she had shocked the bourgeois, to find her set on seeing him a cosy, bourgeois success.
2006 Times Lit. Suppl. 21 Apr. 5/2 There are dozens of tales of his [sc. Baudelaire's] attempts to shock the bourgeois—usually friends, waiters and children.
Compounds
C1. Appositive, as bourgeois-democratic, bourgeois-liberal, etc., adjs.
ΘΚΠ
society > authority > rule or government > politics > political philosophy > principles of or attachment to types of government > [adjective] > supporting democracy or types of
democratic1790
Pantisocratic1794
liberal democratic1833
bourgeois-democratic1918
society > authority > rule or government > politics > party politics > groups or attitudes right to left > [adjective] > left > liberal
liberal1790
liberal1814
liberalistic1836
pinko-liberal1926
bourgeois-liberal1936
1918 Times 14 Dec. 7/6 The ‘bourgeois-democratic’ Russia would be ‘the great market for German industry’.
1936 L. Wirth & E. A. Shils tr. K. Mannheim Ideol. & Utopia i. 28 The liberal beginnings of the bourgeois-capitalistic era.
1936 L. Wirth & E. A. Shils tr. K. Mannheim Ideol. & Utopia v. 249 The bourgeois-liberal mode of thought.
1948 J. Towster Polit. Power in U.S.S.R. i. i. 10 The Soviet state arose on the ruins of the bourgeois-democratic state form.
1999 W. Soyinka Burden of Memory iii. 165 The Seine—that placid symbol of French cultural inspiration, of its bourgeois-artistic as well as its radical artistic soul.
2007 Independent (Nexis) 17 Oct. 34 Some of the content of his speech yesterday was such typically bourgeois-liberal projection that it made me wonder if perhaps I lived secretly somewhere to the right of Attila The Hun.
C2. Parasynthetic, as bourgeois-minded adj.; also bourgeois-mindedness n.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > belief > expressed belief, opinion > bias, prejudice > narrow-mindedness > insularity, provincialism > [noun]
insularity1755
provinciality1769
localism1798
provincialism1819
parish pump1840
parochialism1847
vestrydom1860
vestryism1861
Podsnappery1864
parochialness1866
vestryhood1871
insularism1880
peninsularity1882
parochiality1887
parish pumpery1902
localitis1943
bourgeois-mindedness1955
1862 Spectator 12 July 757/2 The conflict of a gay and flippant cavalier with an able and shrewd, but essentially bourgeois-minded merchant.
1955 H. Hodgkinson Doubletalk 18 The rise of ‘bourgeois-mindedness’.
1994 M. J. Esman Ethnic Politics vii. 193 Militant young socialists who regard foreign workers as..natural allies in their efforts to radicalize the increasingly bourgeois-minded German working class.
C3. Complementary, as bourgeois-looking, etc., adjs.
ΚΠ
1827 C. H. Phipps Historiettes III. 127 M. Schrueber was a vulgar, bourgeois-looking personage.
a1845 R. H. Barham Jerry Jarvis's Wig in Ingoldsby Legends (1847) 3rd Ser. 310 That class of gentlemen who, disdaining the bourgeois-sounding name of ‘attorney-at-law’, are, by a legal fiction, denominated solicitors.
1914 C. H. Sorley Let. June (1919) iv. 191 Berlin is not one of the cities where I should like to go when I die... A merry bourgeois-seeming place, though!
2006 Independent Extra (Nexis) 16 Oct. 8 I always find today that it's more transgressive to want to be dressed up, to want to be completely impeccable and bourgeois-looking, than to be punk or grunge.
C4. Objective with verbal and agent nouns and participles, as bourgeois-shocking n. and adj., bourgeois-shocker (cf. to shock the bourgeois at Phrases).
ΚΠ
1922 Millgate Monthly June 529/2 This process of letting down gently is far more effective than the pleasant pastime of bourgeois-shocking.
1934 R. Campbell Broken Rec. ii. 48 This tame and cowardly gang of bourgeois-shockers.
1964 Winnipeg Free Press 21 Nov. (Mod. Living & Leisure section) 8/2 Most of the poems are not bourgeois-shocking but genuinely surprising and fresh.
2004 B. Ching in R. Gray & O. Robinson Compan. Lit. & Culture Amer. South xii. 214 A compelling combination of the sangfroid of the Carter Family and the bourgeois-shocking antics of Jimmie Rodgers and his descendants.
Derivatives
bourˈgeoisdom n. bourgeois people collectively; the state or condition of being bourgeois; (also) the political ascendancy of the bourgeoisie.
ΘΚΠ
society > society and the community > social class > the common people > specific classes of common people > [noun] > middle class or bourgeoisie > woman > collectively
middle class1654
bourgeoisdom1885
upper-middle1955
society > society and the community > social class > the common people > specific classes of common people > [noun] > middle class or bourgeoisie > position or characteristics of
middle-classdom1901
middle-classism1909
bourgeoisdom1937
1885 W. Morris Let. 19 Oct. in E. P. Thompson William Morris (1955) 878 We were borne into a dull time oppressed with bourgeoisdom and philistinism.
1898 H. W. Fischer Private Lives William II. & his Consort (1909) I. v. 105 Though himself belonging to the lower nobility, separated from bourgeoisdom but by the three letters ‘von’, he [etc.].
1937 ‘C. Caudwell’ Illusion & Reality iv. 87 In its early stages bourgeoisdom requires the shattering of all feudal forms.
1997 Independent on Sunday 14 Dec. i. 12/7 Most of them..have long since reverted to the selfish pleasures of bourgeoisdom.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2013; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
bourgeoisn.2
/bəːˈdʒɔɪs/, U.S. /bərˈdʒɔɪs/ Typography. Now chiefly historical.
A size of type larger than brevier and smaller than long primer. Frequently attributive.
ΘΚΠ
society > communication > printing > types, blocks, or plates > relating to type > [noun] > height of type > names of type sizes
English1539
great primer1539
long primer1553
pica1553
brevier1598
nonpareil1656
pearl1656
small pica1657
minion1659
canon1683
small body1683
minim1706
paragon1706
bourgeois1755
diamond1778
ruby1778
Trafalgar1807
agate1831
minikinc1870
minionette1871
brilliant1875
gem1888
excelsior1902
1755 J. Smith Printer's Gram. 19 The several Bodies to which Printing-letter is cast in England, are 17 in number, of this order. viz.... Long Primer.12. Long Primer. 13. Burjois. 14. Brevier. 15 Minion.
c1781 B. Franklin Inventory Contents Boxes Printing Lett. in Papers (1998) XXXIV. 322 Bourgeois Roman, with Quads. & Spaces.
1824 J. Johnson Typographia II. ii. 16 Two lines of some Diamond will answer to one of Bourgeois.
1852 W. Wilks Hist. Half Cent. Pref. Twenty-three sheets of bourgeois leaded.
1886 Bookmart July 52/1 While the old catalogue used only one kind of type throughout, in the new..the contents of books have been printed in bourgeois.
1902 A. Conan Doyle Hound of Baskervilles iv. 64 There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening halfpenny paper as [etc.].
1923 W. Gamble Music Engraving & Printing (2000) xvi. 195 According to Shanks's latest price list, Long Primer is 7s. 6d.; Bourgeois, 8s.; Brevier, 8s. 5d.; and Nonpareil, 11s.
2004 D. McKitterick Hist. Cambr. Univ. Press I. xvi. 304 A noticeably compact edition, printed in bourgeois type, of the collected works of Ovid..was prefixed with verses written by Ralph Winterton of King's, who had died in 1636.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2013; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1adj.1604
n.21755