petit bourgeois

American  

[puh-tee boor-zhwah, pet-ee boor-zhwah, boor-zhwah, puh-tee boor-zhwa] / pəˈti bʊərˈʒwɑ, ˈpɛt i ˈbʊər ʒwɑ, bʊərˈʒwɑ, pə ti burˈʒwa /

noun

plural

petits bourgeois

1. a person who belongs to the petite bourgeoisie.

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petit bourgeois British  

/ pəti burʒwa, ˈpɛtɪ ˈbʊəʒwɑː /

noun

1. Also called: petite bourgeoisie.   petty bourgeoisie.  the section of the middle class with the lowest social status, generally composed of shopkeepers, lower clerical staff, etc

2. a member of this stratum

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adjective

1. of, relating to, or characteristic of the petit bourgeois, esp indicating a sense of self-righteousness and a high degree of conformity to established standards of behaviour

Other Word Forms

• petit-bourgeois
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of petit bourgeois

Borrowed into English from French around 1855–60

Example Sentences

Her own origins were lower middle class, petit bourgeois: she had an uncle who was a doctor—the star of the family—but neither of her parents had gone to university.

From The New Yorker • Nov. 27, 2016

Yet today, when novels “about nothing” abound, a “small affair” seems the perfect size to skewer petit bourgeois pretensions.

From The Guardian • Sep. 30, 2016

As critic David Thistlewood noted in Back to Postmodernity, in Polke’s critical rendering of a bird that had been “readily absorbed into the petit bourgeois domestic idyll, with its smug sense of being home-made”.

From The Guardian • Jun. 24, 2015

One page later she is deriding this caviar and Champagne celebration as “our petit bourgeois feast” and saying that “we wanted to live the living life,” whatever that is.

From New York Times • Mar. 21, 2010

St. Cloud is a famous place for wedding parties of the petit bourgeois, and Judy felt herself to be very fortunate to witness this first one of the spring.

From Molly Brown's Orchard Home by Speed, Nell