Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Bourgeois |
BourgeoisAdjective1. (according to Marxist thought) being of the property-owning class and exploitive of the working class. 2. Conforming to the standards and conventions of the middle class; "a bourgeois mentality". 3. Belonging to the middle class. Noun1. Engages in industrial commercial enterprise. 2. A member of the middle class. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "bourgeois" was first used: 1564. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Literature | Bourgeois (French), our burgess. The class between the "gentleman" and the peasantry. It includes all merchants, shopkeepers, and what we call the "middle class." Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Multilingual Slang | French (BCBG). (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted. | |||
| Entry | Source | Expression | Field |
| bobo | English | Bourgeois boheme | N/A |
| BOBO | French | Bourgeois bohémien | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |||
Synonyms: BourgeoisSynonyms: conservative (adj), materialistic (adj), burgher (n), businessperson (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Commonalty | Upstart, parvenu, skipjack; nobody, nobody one knows; hesterni quirites, pessoribus orti; bourgeois gentilhomme, novus homo, snob, gent, mushroom, no one knows who, adventurer; man of straw. |
Commoner, one of the people, democrat, plebeian, republican, proletary, proletaire, roturier, Mr. Snooks, bourgeois, epicier, Philistine, grisette, demimonde. | |
Printing | Typography; stereotype, electrotype, aprotype; type, black letter, font, fount; pi, pie; capitals; (letters); brevier, bourgeois, pica; |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Bourgeois |
| English words defined with "bourgeois": Brevier, Burgeois ♦ conservative, conventional ♦ Daumier ♦ Honore Daumier ♦ Long primer ♦ Mann, materialistic ♦ Thomas Mann. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "bourgeois": Cigogne ♦ Fairy ♦ Jourdain ♦ Mamamouchi. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Bourgeois" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Dutch (middleclass citizen), French (bourgeois, middleclass citizen), German (bourgeois). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | There you go, hiding behind a smokescreen of bourgeois cliches (A Hard Day's Night; writing credit: Alun Owen) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Paté de bourgeois (1973) Un bourgeois de Paris (1969) Le Bourgeois gentil mec (1969) The Bourgeois Gentleman (1945) 23 rue des Francs Bourgeois (1995) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
References | |
Books |
|
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Faut-il qu'i' soye riche nout' bourgeois! / [Jules J.A. Baric]. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |  | Léon Bourgeois : Fondateur de la Société des Nations. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |
 | [Louise Bourgeois Boursier]. Credit: National Library of Medicine. | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Author | Quotation |
Gustave Flaubert | The whole dream of democracy is to elevate the proletarian to the level of the imbecility of the bourgeois. |
Karl Marx | In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Author | Date | Quotation |
Communist Manifesto | 1848 | The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. (reference) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | The honest bourgeois who finally came into possession of this list knew its signification |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Belgium | The Volksunie's party chairman is Deputy Geert Bourgeois. (references) |
Hungary | It championed the "values of bourgeois democracy and democratic socialism" and gave equal status to public and private property. (references) | |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits, and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of the manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected that his account of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 a troop of fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The son of a wealthy bourgeois disappeared about the same time, but afterward returned. He had seen the abduction been in pursuit of the fairies. Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers that so great is the fairies' power of transformation that he saw one change itself into two opposing armies and fight a battle with great slaughter, and that the next day, after it had resumed its original shape and gone away, there were seven hundred bodies of the slain which the villagers had to bury. He does not say if any of the wounded recovered. In the time of Henry III, of England, a law was made which prescribed the death penalty for "Kyllynge, wowndynge, or mamynge" a fairy, and it was universally respected. |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Bourgeois" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 97.45% of the time. "Bourgeois" is used about 901 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 97.45% | 878 | 8,097 |
| Noun (singular) | 1.88% | 17 | 85,106 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.44% | 4 | 175,879 |
| Noun (plural) | 0.22% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 901 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following table summarizes the usage of "bourgeois" based on a population census conducted in the United States. Ranks and frequencies are based on all names reported and classified. |
| Name | Usage/Gender | Usage per 100 million Persons | Rank in USA |
| Bourgeois | Last name | 6,000 | 1,989 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits. | |||
| Country | Name |
| France | Bourgeois SA |
| (more examples...) |
Source: compiled by the editor from Icon Group International, Inc.
Expressions using "bourgeois": become bourgeois ♦ Bohemian Bourgeois ♦ petit bourgeois ♦ petty bourgeois ♦ turn into bourgeois. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "bourgeois": bourgeois-democratic, bourgeois-landlord, bourgeois-led, bourgeois-liberal. | |
Ending with "bourgeois": anti-bourgeois, petit-bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, pre-bourgeois. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "bourgeois"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | borgjez (middle class). (various references) | |
Arabic | الرأسمالي, بورجوازي. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | буржоазен (middle class), буржоа, боргез. (various references) | |
Czech | maloburžoazní (petty bourgeois). (various references) | |
Dutch | burgerlijk (civilian, middleclass, non-military), burgerlýk (civil, civilian, middleclass, non-military). (various references) | |
Esperanto | burĝa (middleclass). (various references) | |
Farsi | عضوطبقه متوسطجامعه , عضوطبقه دوم , طبقه کاسب ودکاندار. (various references) | |
Finnish | porvarillinen (middle-class), porvari (burgess, citizen, middleclass citizen). (various references) | |
French | bourgeois, roturier. (various references) | |
German | spießer (babbitt, fawn, Philistine, Square), bürger (burgess, burgesses, burgher, citizen, citizens, commoner, Freeman, middleclass citizen, townsman, townsmen). (various references) | |
Greek | αστόσ (commoner, townsman). (various references) | |
Hebrew | בור' י, רכוש י (capitalistic). (various references) | |
Hungarian | polgári (civic, civil, civilian, non-military), polgár (bud, burgess, burgher, citizen, civilian, commoner, townee), burzsoá (bud). (various references) | |
Indonesian | borjuis. (various references) | |
Italian | borghese (Burgess, civilian, commoner, middle-class person, plain clothes). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | ブリッジ回路 (bloomers, blue, blue backs, Blue Bird, blue book, blue boy, blue chip, blue day, blue film, Blue Impulse, blue Monday, Blue Ribbon, blue sex, blue train, blueberry, blue-black, blue-collar worker, blueglass, blues, bourgeoisie, bridge circuit, brilliant, brilliant cut, British Airways, British Columbia, broom, Brussels, Bulgaria, bull, Burkina Faso, childpornography), homosexual, shops where girls' uniforms and underwear are resold to dirty old men, sleeping train). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ブルジョワ , ブルジョア , ブルジェア . (various references) | |
Manx | meanvrastyllagh. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ourgeoisbay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | burguês (burgess, burgher, citizen, middleclass, middleclass citizen, philistine). (various references) | |
Romanian | orãşean (burgher, citizen, oppidan, townsman, townspeople), capitalist (capitalist, capitalistic, financier). (various references) | |
Russian | буржуазный (middle class, middleclass). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | buržujski (middle class), buržuj. (various references) | |
Spanish | burgués. (various references) | |
Swedish | borgis, borgerlig (civil, middle class, narrow minded). (various references) | |
Turkish | burjuva, kent soylu, dokuz puntoluk harf. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | буржуазний, буржуа. (various references) | |
Vietnamese | người tư sản. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | civis. (various references) |
| Old French | 900-1400 | burgeis. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "bourgeois": bourgeoise, bourgeoises, bourgeoisie, bourgeoisies, bourgeoisification, bourgeoisifications, bourgeoisified, bourgeoisifies, bourgeoisify, bourgeoisifying. (additional references) | |
Words ending with "bourgeois": antibourgeois, postbourgeois. (additional references) | |
Words containing "bourgeois": embourgeoisement, embourgeoisements. (additional references) | |
| |
"Bourgeois" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Bopurgois, borgeois, borgioli, Borgois, bougeois, Bourgeau, Bourgeaud, bourgeios, bourgeo, bourgeoi, bourgeoir, bourgeoise, bourgeoised, bourgeosie, bourgeosis, bourgeouis, bourgeous, bourgoeis, bourgois, Bourgoise, Bourgueil, bourguios, bourguois, bourreurs, burgeous, burgois. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "b-e-g-i-o-o-r-s-u" | |
-2 letters: boogers, boogies, bougies, brogues, burgoos, goobers, goosier, ourebis, rubigos, rugbies. | |
-3 letters: bogies, booger, boogie, bougie, bourgs, bourse, brogue, bruise, burgoo, buries, busier, erugos, gibers, gobies, goboes, goober, gooier, grouse, guiros, orgies, ourebi, regius, ribose, rogues, rouges, rubies, rubigo, rugose. | |
-4 letters: bergs, biers, birse, bogie, bogus, boors, bores, bourg, bouse, bries, brigs, brios, broos. | |
| Words containing the letters "b-e-g-i-o-o-r-s-u" | |
+1 letter: bourgeoise. | |
+2 letters: bourgeoises, bourgeoisie. | |
+3 letters: bourgeoisies, bourgeoisify, urbanologies. | |
+4 letters: antibourgeois, boardinghouse, interboroughs, postbourgeois. | |
+5 letters: boardinghouses, bourgeoisified, bourgeoisifies, neurobiologies, neurobiologist. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Quotations: Familiar | 9. Quotations: Historic 10. Quotations: Fiction 11. Quotations: Non-fiction 12. Usage Frequency | 13. Names: Frequency 14. Names: Company Usage 15. Expressions 16. Expressions: Internet | 17. Translations: Modern 18. Translations: Ancient 19. Abbreviations 20. Acronyms | 21. Derivations 22. Anagrams 23. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
