If you describe people, their way of life, or their attitudes as bourgeois, you disapprove of them because you consider them typical of conventional middle-class people.
[disapproval]
He's accusing them of having a bourgeois and limited vision.
2. adjective
Marxists use bourgeois when referring to the capitalist system and to the social class that owns most of the wealth in that system.
[technical]
...the modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society.
His privileged bourgeois family insisted on a good education.
3. See also petit bourgeois
More Synonyms of bourgeois
bourgeois in British English1
(ˈbʊəʒwɑː, bʊəˈʒwɑː) often derogatory
nounWord forms: plural-geois
1.
a member of the middle class, esp one regarded as being conservative and materialistic or (in Marxist thought) a capitalist exploiting the working class
2.
a mediocre, unimaginative, or materialistic person
adjective
3.
characteristic of, relating to, or comprising the middle class
4.
conservative or materialistic in outlook
a bourgeois mentality
5.
(in Marxist thought) dominated by capitalists or capitalist interests
Derived forms
bourgeoise (ˈbʊəʒwɑːz, bʊəˈʒwɑːz)
feminine noun
Word origin
C16: from Old French borjois, burgeis burgher, citizen, from bourg town; see burgess
bourgeois in British English2
(bəˈdʒɔɪs)
noun
(formerly) a size of printer's type approximately equal to 9 point
Word origin
C19: perhaps from its size, midway between long primer and brevier
Bourgeois in British English
(French burʒwa)
noun
Léon Victor Auguste (leɔ̃ viktɔr oɡyst). 1851–1925, French statesman; first chairman of the League of Nations: Nobel peace prize 1920
bourgeois in American English
(bʊrˈʒwɑ; ˈbʊrˌʒwɑ)
nounWord forms: pluralbourˈgeois (bʊrˈʒwɑ)
1. Obsolete
a freeman of a medieval town
2.
a self-employed person, as a shopkeeper or businessman
3.
a member of the bourgeoisie, or middle class
4.
a person whose beliefs, attitudes, and practices are conventionally middle-class
adjective
5.
of or characteristic of a bourgeois or the bourgeoisie; middle-class; also used variously to mean conventional, smug, materialistic, etc.
Word origin
Fr < OFr burgeis < ML burgensis < burgus, borgus, town < OFr borc or Frank *burg, bourg
Examples of 'bourgeois' in a sentence
bourgeois
There is no youthful revolution against bourgeois values.
Times, Sunday Times (2009)
The whiff of rebellion against bourgeois convention appeals to the fashionably rebellious bourgeoisie.
Times, Sunday Times (2016)
He came back like the good bourgeois that he was.
Times, Sunday Times (2006)
And what a piece of petit bourgeois mediocrity it is.
Times, Sunday Times (2015)
By the standard of past royal marriages he is a model of bourgeois respectability.
Times, Sunday Times (2009)
It was "democratic" reform within the limits of bourgeois society.
Low, Nicholas Politics, Planning and the State (1990)
He feared that it would be too shocking for bourgeois society and his daughters.
Times, Sunday Times (2007)
Perhaps the idea of a self is a modern, bourgeois contrivance.
Times, Sunday Times (2012)
There was a bourgeois revolution of a sort, but a failed one.
Shubert, Adrian A Social History of Modern Spain (1991)
Now it is about that old bourgeois value, good housekeeping.
Times, Sunday Times (2008)
Indeed, to disguise a subversive anarchist bomb as bourgeois respectability.
Times, Sunday Times (2015)
Perhaps bourgeois society and marriage aren't to blame at all.
Times, Sunday Times (2012)
It was a solidly bourgeois family, and proud of it.
Times, Sunday Times (2006)
By missing out on a bourgeois revolution like Russia, we failed to properly evolve.
Times, Sunday Times (2015)
Work, like other considerations of a bourgeois society, is very little discussed.
Times, Sunday Times (2010)
When he came out of prison, he gave up political activism for the anonymity and stability of a bourgeois French family life.
Times, Sunday Times (2008)
Before he met her, he was more sports fan than politician, born into a bourgeois family with no interest in politics.
Times, Sunday Times (2015)
Quotations
The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the selfHermann HesseSteppenwolf
Destroy him as you will, the bourgeois always bounces up - execute him, expropriate him, starve him out en masse, and he reappears in your childrenCyril Connolly
In other languages
bourgeois
British English: bourgeois ADJECTIVE
If you describe people, their way of life, or their attitudes as bourgeois, you disapprove of them because you consider them typical of conventional middle-class people.
He's accusing them of having a bourgeois and limited vision.
American English: bourgeois
Brazilian Portuguese: burguês
Chinese: 中产阶级的
European Spanish: aburguesado
French: bourgeois
German: bürgerlich
Italian: borghese
Japanese: 中産階級の
Korean: 소시민의
European Portuguese: burguês
Latin American Spanish: aburguesado
Chinese translation of 'bourgeois'
bourgeois
(ˈbuəʒwɑː)
adj
(pej) 资(資)产(產)阶(階)级(級)的 (zīchǎn jiējí de)
(adjective)
Definition
conservative or materialistic in outlook
the bourgeois ideology of individualism
Synonyms
middle-class
She is rapidly losing the support of middle-class voters.
conservative
People tend to be more adventurous when they're young and more conservative as they get older.
traditional
conventional
conventional views
provincial
suburban
ghastly good taste and suburban gentility
small-town
materialistic
conformist
property-owning
hidebound
Pooterish
Quotations
The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self [Hermann Hesse – Steppenwolf]Destroy him as you will, the bourgeois always bounces up - execute him, expropriate him, starve him out en masse, and he reappears in your children [Cyril Connolly]
Additional synonyms
in the sense of conservative
Definition
conventional in style
People tend to be more adventurous when they're young and more conservative as they get older.