épaterv.
épater le(s) bourgeois: to startle or shock the ‘man in the street’ or the uncritical adherent of traditional (artistic or ethical) theories. The French phrase ‘Je les ai épatés, les bourgeois’ is attributed to Alexandre Privat d'Anglemont (d. 1859).
ΚΠ
1903 G. B. Shaw Man & Superman Ep. Ded. p. v You once asked me why I did not write a Don Juan play... You meant me to épater le bourgeois.
1920 O. W. Holmes Let. 30 Aug. (1953) I. 277 One is that you refer to things not generally known by your readers without explanation—a thing which inferior people do to ‘épater les bourgeois’.
1938 W. S. Maugham Summing Up 233 Sometimes he [sc. an author]..to épater le bourgeois has paraded the red waistcoat of Théophile Gautier.
1941 L. MacNeice Poetry of Yeats v. 95 Moore..is writing like a naughty boy pour épater les bourgeois.
1958 B. Nichols Sweet & Twenties i. 21 Tallulah's wickedness is really a pose—a mask to épater les bourgeois.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1972; most recently modified version published online March 2019).
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